The flooding along the Florida Trail will not drown fire ants. Instead, their colonies emerge from the soil, form a loose ball, and float with the water until they reach a dry area or object they can hungrily crawl up on, and that could very well be your leg if you happen to walk into one.
The deep water through this section also caused tired hikers to clump together. Six of us converged on Tracey Branch Camp. A hiker oasis thanks to Forever Florida who allows hikers to camp with access to a shower, picnic tables, and flush toilets.
Though the next 15 miles were also underwater, that was only a warm up hike for the dreaded road walk, a nearly 45 mile road walk into Christmas, Florida.
Together, doing all those miles might be fun. Doing it at night, with no sleep, and all at once also sounded fun. So I glittered up with Roundabout, and we trudged the 15 miles through the swamp to the road, where we’d hoped to nap before dark. Only Roundabout found a trail angel named Snacks who offered to bring us out pizza to fuel our crazy nighttime hike adventure.
So we packed up, without a nap, and moved from Jane Green Camp to sit by the side of the road and devour our fill of delicious pizza. The long hike with sparse resupply had thrown everyone off, and some were out of food, so the pizza was a blessing.
We all attempted to nap on the side of the levee, next to the road, but only one of us got any sleep. We packed, donned headlamps, and got ready to night hike/road walk until we reached Christmas.
It was our Christmas Eve and we didn’t know what to expect.
#floridatrail #ftthruhike