Back at it with another blog post from the Florida Trail.
I've been taking a long recess this week, taking my time to edit
all the pictures from my trip and resting, but at the same time I've been dying
to tell you a lot of stories from this past trip. I hope I don't make this post too long
because this was an amazing hiking trip on the Florida Trail.
On every trip that we make, we usually have somebody taking us in the morning,
and then picking us up once we have completed our trip,
unfortunately, this time we didn't plan well it and had nobody to take us,
we decided it was time to take a risk, so we hopped into my car and drove to
Buckhead Ridge, and there we parked my car somewhere safe in the bushes.
It was a cold morning, I remember getting out of the car and
warming up a little bit before we started walking back into the trail.
 This time we were supposed to hike from Buckhead Ridge to Basinger,
our stop was a local church called Kingdom of God Embassy, a total of 40-miles.
After a couple of hours hiking through the cold morning,
we started noticing this was the section we were supposed to have done
on the previous trip before this one, it didn't seem that bad at the beginning,
we only need a couple of miles to finish it.
 It's weird to say that most of our mornings out here are cold and quiet, 
however, this past weekend it was a completely different story.
The sun came out slowly shining on us and giving us a fascinating view of the trail,
really we were just stunned by the beauty of it.
As we hiked more we would stop and take short breaks just to enjoy
this beautiful sunrise, something out of a movie scene.
Eventually, we knew it was going to be a great day ahead of us,
and it is not every day where you get to enjoy a 
beautiful sunrise in the countryside of Florida.
In my opinion, it has been one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen. 
This section of the trail was definitely an improvement compared
to our previous hikes in Clewiston, Moore Haven and Buckhead Ridge.
Once we passed the Kissimmee River bridge and entered Okeechobee County,
the trail started getting better and better every mile.
Definitely, a trail that offers a great view of the Kissimmee River
and many campsites throughout this entire area. 
 After an early morning start on the trail, we hiked for 6 hours straight,
until we made to 18-miles which initially it would have been our campground,
but since we got here around 12:30pm we decided to eat our lunch here
and spend a good extra hour to rest after a long walk.
Eventually, one thing led to another, I convinced my friend Hector
that we should hike at least 2-3 miles more in order to get a better
campsite with firm ground, I was completely right.
After an hour and a half, we made it to our campground!
This was a spectacular view of the Kissimmee River and next to a Water Management Area,
which served as a great spot for hikers to camp out for the night.
As we got there, we knew we had a lot of time to kill, so we set our tents on time,
ate some snacks, took many pictures and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.
It's funny to say but usually, we don't make it this early to our point of rest, 
however, it seems like every time we are hiking at a quick pace
and we are feeling comfortable on the trail.
The next day we headed out in the morning as usual,
after hiking for a mile or so we encounter a tree of oranges,
here is where we lost it all.
We stopped for a good time and ate some oranges and also took some more for the road,
little we knew that by the time we had walked for 2 hours we
started craving oranges and we just couldn't help to eat them all.
They were fresh and delicious, also the oranges helped big time,
since we were somewhat thirsty and we didn't want to drink water,
the oranges solved the problem for us.
At some point, we made it to  Yates Marsh Campsite public area entrance,
this is was the point where the trail would get back into the forest,
and would take us to different campsites around this area.
It offers beautiful scenery and calmness of the forest and lots of field to camp out.
For a moment, it reminded me of the Big Cypress forest, but just better and more peaceful,
even though, Big Cypress is one of the most recognized preserves in the country,
I just thought this section of the trail had the wildlife feel that most places in Florida have.
Once we hiked through the Yates Marsh campsites,
we entered through another section of the trail that offered more campsites.
In the next 4-5 miles, we encountered the Chandler Slough campsite
and Chandler Slough East Access.
This section was even more entertaining, the Florida Trail volunteers had
created a wooden staircase to climb some of the private fences around this area.
After hiking through the forest for hours, the trail took us back to the road and
we only to hike for the next 2-miles until we got to our stop Kingdom of God Embassy.
Reminiscing about this past trip, I should say we had an amazing time and enjoyed
every single moment, from hiking early in the morning, to witnessing the beautiful sunrises
and sunsets, to eating oranges and getting back into the wild forest.
If you'd asked me, I know we still have a long way to go,
but so far this has been my favorite section of the Florida Trail.
I really hope you guys enjoy all the pictures and content from this trip,
we will taking a break for this coming week due to some personal matter
that needs attention, but we will back next week for another trip if everything works out.
Until the next post!