Okay, so yesterday Sheila was reading about hiking trails in a local State Park that sounded really nice! So off we go, not knowing what to expect. We get there, park the truck, grab our backpacks and cameras, and head to the trail.
It was quite fascinating, in retrospect, to look at how the trail surface changed as we progressed down the path. We start out walking along this nice paved path and we thought it was nice but we were hoping for something more challenging!
We keep going and eventually the pavement ends and we're on a dirt trail. Okay, that's better, but still hoping for a tougher trail. After a few minutes, the soil gets really sandy.
Along this path we come across an interesting patch of woods. Burnt out woods. We were puzzled! Apparently through this section, the park rangers use prescribed fires to protect the natural vegetation while eliminating invasive species. We were surprised to learn that oak trees are considered invasive.
The farther we walked, more and more charred remains appear. CRAZY!
After some time the trail becomes significantly different. We cross a bridge over a swampy, marshy area...
then dunes appear, and suddenly we're transported to a desert!
This is fascinating! We've seen dunes before but never like this. We're familiar with dunes that run along oceanfront and reach maybe 50 feet, 100 feet, sometimes even 200 feet away from the water's edge. But these dunes! Unbelievable! They extend thousands of feet from the ocean. In other words, acres and acres. Occasionally we catch a glimpse of the water, but it's almost entirely sand. Everywhere!
If it wasn't for the signage, a person could easily get lost out here!
Eventually we reached a fork in the trail where we followed a loop through some more 'desert' before eventually retracing our steps back to the truck. Driving back to the RV park, we couldn't stop talking about these trails. Absolutely fascinating! I'm thinking we'll be visiting this park again before we leave Florida!
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