Sunday November 12th 2023

It rained most for most of the night, but the day was just cloudy and humid. The temperature climbed into the low eighties. The week ahead is forecast to be cooler with a higher chance of rain each day.

I finally got out to the Van Fleet trail for a hike today. The Van Fleet trail is a converted railroad track that stretches about thirty miles north south from Polk City to Groveland Florida. It is a very flat and straight paved path that is designed for bicycles and people. There are a limited number of access points along the trails path. Today I walked out and back on one section in the middle of the trail. Based on the trail markers my round trip distance was only about five miles.

Most of the other users of the trail today were bicyclists. I only saw a couple of other walkers. On previous visits, I have passed a lot more walkers. Today’s cloud cover made the walk comfortable, but didn’t help highlight the foliage. For Florida, there was some nice color along the way. I also didn’t see any real land based wildlife. In the past I have seen deer, but not today.

In the big swampy area that surrounds the creek that separated Polk County from Lake County I had a few water based wildlife sightings. There were a couple of turtles on a downed tree and one good sized alligator in the water. The lighting really work against me taking a picture of the gator. For some reason the picture thinks the alligator is brown. The water was muddy, but the gator was the usual gray color.