Florida Trail - 40 Miles (I-75 Rest Area to Stormwater Treatment Area 5/6)

Florida Trail - 40 Miles (I-75 Rest Area

to Stormwater Treatment Area 5/6)

Hello folks!

I am back once again with another blog post,

this time I will tell you some of the experiences of the 

next 40 miles we hiked through the Florida Trail.

 Basically, we started the trail on our last stop

which it was at the I-75 Rest Area,

this section of the trail consisted hiking through

all the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation,

a private land that only is accessed by obtaining a permit in advance.

Of course, we applied for our permit on time,

and two days later we got the green light that we were approved,

and we kept a copy to ourselves just in case.

We started our hike at an early morning hour,

 with a beautiful sunrise shining through the pine trees,

and throughout the most part of the trail.

This zone of the I-75 Rest Area is pretty easy to hike,

and the good thing is that it leads to other trails such as:

Blue Trail 0.8 Miles, Red Trail 2.0 Miles, Nobles Campsite 4.8 Miles,

and the Seminole Indian Reservation Gate 7.4 Miles

which is where we were hiking to.

I honestly believe this part of the trail was made

 for those who want to spend a day at one of these campsites,

a pretty easy and short hike to do.

On the first couple of hours, we were hiking at a pretty fast pace,

which helped us big time to finished the 17-miles on the first day.

When we arrived at our destination,

we noticed there were several places to visit,

a safari, museums, churches, school, and man other places.

All of these places are part of the Big Cypress Seminole community,

a pretty peaceful and small community area.

We met a few of the residents in this area,

they were very helpful and wanted to provide us with clothes, water or food,

which we actually didn't need any of these supplies

but it is a very nice thing to do for all the hikers out there. 

We set camp and slept through the night as we needed

to wake up early again to get back on the road.

The next day was a tough one because we needed to hike 

around 20-23 miles and the weather was not helping us.

It was definitely a hot day,

I remembered so vividly since we were heading north

and the sun was hitting from the front side of the trail. 

For a couple of hours,

we decided to have a quick lunch break because

we didn't have a lot of time ahead of us.

We started noticing a section of trail was not marked with

the usual orange trail mark from the Florida Trail,

but we didn't mind it and kept walking through this path until we came across

with a 67-year-old hiker named David, 

he had been hiking for the past 6 days from Oasis Visitor Center

all the way through his home town Lakeland, FL

which is located a little bit south of Kissimmee.

He was a nice and great gentleman,

we exchanged a few words and stories, and we all got to know each other,

which was kind of great for us to talk to other hikers since we hadn't seen

another hiker out there on this part of the trail.

David advise us that this section of the trail was an

alternative trail or different route of the Florida Trail,

he mentioned that this part of the trail was still incomplete but that it will

connect in the end with the original Florida Trail.

After all, we were to surpass this section of the trail,

and of course, the trail connected in the end.

We made it exactly at sunset time,

once we were arriving at the Stormwater Treatment Area 5/6

the sun was fading and thank god our ride was there waiting for us.

I believe I snapped a lot of pictures on this trip,

I couldn't upload all of them but only the ones that counted.

Take some time to go through all these content and pictures.

See you in the next post!

 

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