Florida Hiking Resources
As I woke up yesterday morning with a horrible stomach bug I thought I was being damned for something, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel a day later. All the pain and suffering wasn’t in vain, for in my time of intense discomfort I managed to locate a series of really interesting tools to further expand my pleasures in hiking (no, not orgy forest) but…
St. John’s River alpha list, which I’d been searching around on their site since I heard of the little park system. Even though the site is extremely archaic in its simple linking system, this one single section of the site is the Noah’s Ark for all the lands the SJR currently overlooks. Little organizations like this give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside that for at least as long as I’m here, there will be plenty of clean, natural, and undisturbed areas that allow us normal humans to get away from the normal day-to-day hangs we’ve all got to face.
Random google listing, created by dtnagel, is a huge haul of camping/hiking/scouting data apparently compiled by this user for boy scouting purposes (for boy scouts, not to actually scout for boys…you sick bastards). I use this site to find a spot that is close enough to travel to and from during a short weekend, yet far enough away to BE away. With this person’s listings I cross them on the SJR site and see if the park is the kind of place I prefer.
I’m a little picky when it comes to places I go exploring:
- I like it to be as far away from all highways, developments, bullshit as possible.
- Camping to me isn’t pulling up in a spot in my gigantic RV and hooking up to the gas/water/electricity/internet lines and sitting in inside all weekend. Camping to me is hiking a few miles on the only path out to the site itself where there is (at most) a single burn pit and a picnic table.
- Constant urinals and water fountains don’t line my kind of hiking trails. I carry my own water supply and I can piss where I damn well please and I damn well need.
Most of those, to normal people, would be no-brainers. Unfortunately this isn’t the case, but I can guarantee you that all the places I will end up hiking through are researched. I read reviews and most importantly check the trail maps to get a feel for how the trail will actually be (if its empty its a good trail), the only reason that I might put a trail on thats a tad bit more “family-friendly” is because there was some outside attraction (ie., museum, exhibition, etc).