Tuesday April 23rd 2024

It was a gorgeous sunny day with a high temperature in the upper seventies. With the low humidity it was a great day for outdoor activity. I decided to hike a section of the Van Fleet trail. The trail is a thirty mile section of converted train right of way from Polk City to Groveland.

The section of trail I like to hike is right in the middle. The whole trail is straight and flat as would be expected of a converted train track. The walk I took today was from the parking area on Green Pond Road north about two and half miles to an area know as the bridges. Basically it is two bridges about a quarter mile apart that cross over a swampy area. Most of the other ground along the trail is pasture land.

The swamp at the bridges contains turtles and alligators. Today I saw one turtle and three or four alligators. The vegetation is very thick. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was looking right at other gators or turtles that were well camouflaged. There were also a couple of white birds back in the woods that were hard to see well enough to identify. I suspect they were egrets or ibises.

The trail wasn’t busy today. I was passed by a few bicyclists, but I didn’t see any other walkers. Overall it was a very relaxed walk. I stopped several times to take pictures of wildflowers and watch gopher tortoises scurry into the brush. The five mile walk took about two hours.