There was a storm coming that had many hikers concerned about spending the night outside. Personally, I was more concerned that I’d finished the last of my water before we broke camp at the STA-5 water management complex. We’d be walking the levee along the canal, where water without agricultural runoff would be scarce if it wasn’t for the caches maintained by trail angels.
Water caches that I absent mindedly walked past because I was having an otherwise pleasant morning hike.
With the cloud cover and light breeze, the thirteen mile stretch to the next water source didn’t feel like a problem.
Doubly so when a United Rentals worker stopped and offered us Gatorades.
Synchronicity was in the air. Nothing could go wrong.
Within a mile of reaching the water cache, Alan, a Florida Trail angel, stopped to offer us Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. We were so close that I refused his offer to refill my water bottles.
So we kept going, and with less than half a mile to go, Mr. Rogers, a local we’d chatted with briefly, drove up and offered us a lift out of his neighborhood. “To get water,” he said, all the way in Clewiston.
The unexpected ride in the back of his pickup truck saved us miles of hiking, allowing us to prepare for the nights storm that had local tornado warnings in effect.
Our safety precautions included eating lots of Mexican food and hiking out of town along the Herbert Hoover Dike. To then tent in a flat grassy area at Uncle Joe’s. The people there were also nice enough to offer their enclosed porch if the oncoming storm got too rough to ride out in our little tents.
From inside my tent I watched the front edge of the storm rolling across the map on the screen of my phone. Closer to Clewiston. Closer to us.
Suddenly, my tent was being violently tugged and shoved, back and forth, as the wind picked up. Holding onto my tent from the inside, I started to wonder how long of a night it was going to be, if I’d miscalculated the duration of the storm and steered @joshua.acey wrong. He was new to long distance hiking and I already had him yellow blazing to get ahead of the storm. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken the risk…
#floridatrail #ftthruhike