In early June, the USDA Forest Service, National Forests in Florida released the 2012 Florida National Scenic Trail Strategic Plan. This planning document is the first guidance document for the future of the Florida Trail since the trail’s original inception as a National Scenic Trail in 1986.
About Sandra Friend
2012 State of the Trail Report now available
The Florida National Scenic Trail 2012 State of the Trail Report is now available for download from the USDA Forest Service.
45N68W passes Florida tests
Impressed with trials of 45N68W, a non-DEET, natural repellant that’s been well worth testing in Florida’s buggy conditions to keep flying insects, especially mosquitoes, at bay.
4th of July Fireworks from the Florida Trail
Dueling fireworks – Winter Springs and Oviedo – were visible from the Florida Trail the other night if you knew where to look! My friend Joan, aka Bluetrail, had a great plan – head out on the Cross Seminole Trail bridge over SR 434 after dark. Sure enough, it was a high enough vantage point […]
72 Hours (or so) in Hot Springs, North Carolina
Invited to Hot Springs to hang out with our hiker friends Chuck & Tigger, we headed back to this pleasant Appalachian Trail community for the second time this year.
9 to 5
One of the absolute truths of a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail is that it is not recreation. It’s a job, filled with repetitive tasks. Find and purify water. Fix meals. Determine how far the feet and knees can handle. Plan town stops. Put up and take down tent. Roll out sleeping bags. Inflate and […]
A chat with Nimblewill Nomad
I had a pleasant chat Wednesday night with one of my hiking heroes, M.J. Eberhart, aka Nimblewill Nomad, calling from Paradise. That’s Paradise, Michigan, and Eb is within a couple of days of completing the North Country Trail through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and swinging down into the rest of Michigan as he continues […]
A Different Perspective
When you’re on foot, it’s a little strange to be walking up an Interstate ramp. This was our first interstate crossing on the AT, under I-40. Many more to come.
A Most Dismal Place
While it once covered a million acres of the Colonies, the Great Dismal Swamp, now protected by the Great Dismal Swamp NWR founded in 1974, encompasses 112,000 acres of pine uplands and cypress-tupelo swamps criss-crossed by ditches and levees used by loggers for more than a century.
A new perspective on the St. Johns River
If you’ve ever hiked along or near the St Johns River off SR 46 between Sanford and Mims, you know the landscapes are flat. Sometimes the braided river channels through this chain of lakes may have just enough elevation for an oak hammock, limbs gracefully arched over the marshy shallows. Sometimes the floodplain is a […]