Florida Trails: JDSP 5.5 mi hike

I #hiked 5.5 miles on the #FloridaTrail in Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

I only meant to hike 4.9 miles...

I found out that the Loxahatchee Chapter of the Florida Trail Association has hike-togethers, and today they'd be walking about 5 miles on the green marked trail (with a detour to an overlook). I was running really late this morning and got to JDSP about 10 minutes late, and they'd already left. Not to waste the opportunity, I took off on the green blaze trail anyway! I thought I saw them once, when I was on top of a HUGE sand dune, but never caught up to them. I thought I was a little lost when the trail cozied up around a small lake. The grass wasn't as destroyed as I'd expect for a well-walked trail, and it took minutes to find a blaze. And then I DID get lost. HA! The trail ends at the road that, to one who knows what they're looking at, leads right to a very visible ranger shack. I couldn't see any blazes, but seemed to have nearly half a mile to go (I'd forgotten that my Garmin had been started LATE!) So, I looked at the map, decided I'd go left up the road a bit and probably see a blaze. I thought I did too, until it turned out to be a bright green patch of needles on a tree. I actually pulled out my phone to gps where I was, and realized my mistake. So, my detour put me at 5.5 on the watch, which meant I probably made just under 6 on the whole hike. I never did catch up to the FTA group, but I plan to be on time from now on!

The green trail was a really nice trail. The first half is all white sand dunes, and big ones too. I kept thinking "there ARE hills in Florida!" I noted a very fuzzy brownish caterpillar, and a gopher tortoise just rambling on down the trail. Some of the weird "side of the road" type of things that caught my fancy were what looks like a very shallow old well, an odd concrete abandoned shelter of some kind, and the lovely rickity looking boardwalk by the lake. The second half of the trail was almost all road, mostly paved with blacktop. It was a nice rest from the dunes, but was less natural and therefore a little less interesting (at least until I hit the lake, then interest abounded). It was also less shady on these paved areas, and less breezy. I definitely got a little more brown today.

I really liked the hike overall, and of course it's somewhere new so I'm babbling about it. I'd like to go back and do one of the longer trails there. They're all "Florida Trails" and "Great Florida Birding Trails" but I don't think it's actually Florida National Scenic Trail. (I'm still working on getting all the distinctions in.)