Florida - Solo

I took a business trip to Florida for a week.  I was there to critique every aspect of EFY so I got to attend as if I was an attendee.  It was amazing.  Now I know why everyone wanted to go to EFY every year!

Anyhow, you know me and of course I had to go exploring a little in my down time.

My first adventure was to Hontoon Island State Park.   It was only 6 miles away but seemed like it was way out in the middle of nowhere.  It's a very unique State Park as it's an island.  The only way on/off is from a small boat that can hold about 12 people, but they only let 6 get on.  It's literally a one minute ride over to the island though.

The roads are cut in the middle of the trees, and the grass goes right up to the road!  No shoulders, no dirt. ...just grass.  This was the "freeway"

This was the road once off the freeway - no sidewalks, nothing but grass

The park is about 1600 acres, with about 2/3 of that swamp that isn't really accessible. There is a 3 mile trail around, and several shorter hiking trails. You can rent bikes or canoes, but there are no motorized vehicles on the island.

2000 years ago Native Americans from the Hontoon Tribe lived here.  They gathered shellfish from the nearby river and discarded the shells in one concentrated areas, so much it created a mound about 30 feet high.  They call these mounds Indian Shell Mounds or "middens" and there are several in the area.  My destination was a 3 mile round trip hike to one of the these mounds.

IT WAS SO HOT!!!!!  The trail was shade most of the way, but with 93 degrees and 100% humidity, wow, I have never sweat so much in my life.

The park, being an island, is surrounded by water and a river

This is the boat that goes across the channel.  A State Park employee "drives" it back and forth.  He stays on the other side (the island side) and you have to raise an orange flag and he comes over to get you.  The park is free which was interesting

The trail wandered through thick vegetation like this

There were a lot of these large black birds

The beginning of the trail

The trail opened up here ha

Lots of parts were wet and swampy, so boards like this helped to keep my shoes dry

Look at all the moss on the slanted tree to the left

The green through the trees is water....swamp......I'm sure there were plenty of alligators in there watching me.  IT WAS SO HOT!!  And lots of noises in the bushes and trees.  I never saw anyone else on the trail during the hike

This is the beginning of the mound.  I expected to see a small hill of shells and stuff, but it's so overgrown, it was hard to see.  Shells were all on the trail, and if I looked between the brush, I could see, but the only way you could tell you were on the mound, is because the rest of the hike was 100% flat, and this part was not.

Found this and wasn't even looking for it.  These are Benchmarks or Geodetic Markers placed around the country that helps define and maintain our gps and longitude and latitude system.  As an added bonus, these can be logged as a Geocache!  As you can see, this one was placed in 1935.

This is a cutaway representation of what the shell mound would look like

VIDEO:  Listen to this video - turn up your speakers. This is how the entire hike was

My next adventure during the week, was to two Sugar Plantation ruin sites.  The first was the Bulow Plantation Ruins State Park.  There were a lot of sugar plantations in this part of Florida from the early 1800s.

In 1821, this 4675 acre site was acquired by Charles Bulow who, with slave labor, cleared 2200 acres and planted sugar cane, cotton and rice. It was an extremely large and profitable plantation.

A war broke out with the US Government and the Seminole Indians, and the plantation got caught in the middle, and Seminoles burned the entire plantation down in 1836.  All that's left today are the ruins of the sugar mill, some wells, and foundations of a few buildings.

This was about 2 miles down this road off the main road

A short 1/2 mile trail leads to the ruins

Only a few rocks remain of the slave quarters

Can you imagine clearing over 2000 acres of land that looked like this?  No thank you.

The plantation sits right next to a river, that was used to transport the sugar to other areas

It was so beautiful!  IT WAS SO HOT!

An old fountain has been reclaimed by lily pads 

The same day, I also went to Dunlawton Plantation Ruins, as it was not far from the Bulow Ruins.

Most of this park has evolved into a huge garden area with all kinds of things.  It even has dinosaurs as it was once a dino park to try to get people to come, and even had a train that went all around the garden area.  

This was a very huge and old tree

Nature's chapel wasn't very crowded with people

These leaves were HUGE!!! Like as wide as a person

EFY is usually held at a University and the attendees stay there the entire week.  This one was in DeLand, a fairly small town of about 27,000 people about an hour north of Orlando, and 45 minutes west of Daytona Beach.  

The University there, Stetson University, is an older University, being founded in the late 1880s and some of the buildings are on the National Historic Register.  It's a beautiful campus, but pretty small compared to BYU.  Only about 4000 students attend Stetson University, compared to BYU's 34,000!

Palm trees were all over campus and the grounds was manicured and exceptionally clean

The grass was super short, like a golf tee area

My last adventure was to the Canaveral National Seashore, which is mostly 12 miles of beaches near the Space Center.  There is also a Wildlife Refuge area there as well.

On the way there, this was a little section of a canal that Manatees apparently frequent often.  I thought sure, what are the chances there will be some there?  I decided to stop and look since I've never seen a manatee.

Uh,  there were about 20 just feeding along the shore.  For some unknown reason, they like to come here and just dig around in the mud

At the Seashore National Park, there is another shell mound, this one called Turtle Mound and it's about 35 feet high.

Like the other one, it was hard to actually see, except that it was a little hill and everything else flat around it.  You can see some of the shells here

The space center launch pad used now for rockets

I made it to the seashore

Back inland a bit, I took a 7 mile "wildlife drive" where signs said do not walk, you must drive and only get out of the car at designated areas, due to wildlife danger (alligators)

It was very flat and very swampy.  Tons of birds around

The small wake in the middle is an alligator swimming

This was from a lookout tower a short 1/4 mile walk from the road along a hiking trail.  This was a designated get out of the car area.  The trail is about 10 feet wide with water on both sides.  On my way back to the car, I looked down into the water and a very huge alligator was just sitting there in the water next to the bank staring right at me.  I ran.  Fast.  I wanted to go back and get a pic, but I didn't.  :-()