Misty Mornin' Hop, Part Two

After backtracking from the river and glade, I stepped onto the road’s shoulder and walked across Morris Bridge. A couple cars zipped by, and, as often happens, I wondered if the drivers had any inkling of the natural beauty that sits just off road waiting to be explored:

On the other side of the bridge, I climbed down onto the boardwalk that passes underneath. A great blue heron was standing by the river no more than 15 feet away, but as soon as I reached for my camera it took flight and flapped upstream on its enormous wings. Thus began a one-minute stretch in which I found myself close to several photogenic birds but failed to get any photos.

Soon after emerging from the bridge, the boardwalk empties into a shaded parking lot where a broad-winged hawk was sitting on a low-hanging branch. He did not flinch as I approached holding my camera; however, when I lifted it to snap a picture, he went airborne in the beat of an eye and vanished into the trees.

And when I made it to the trail on the opposite side of the parking lot, I saw a pair of wood ducks swimming in a creek. That would seem to be the perfect place to take a picture, because shouldn’t water slow a creature down? However -- there’s that word again -- when they saw me they managed to go from floating to flying with stunning speed.

With that, I decided to forge ahead and forget about trying to photograph the animals. A minute later I arrived at a live oak with thick, green resurrection ferns growing on its trunk. Knowing that our area’s resurrections had been brown just a week or two before, I interpreted this as a sign of impending spring:

Back on December 6th I wrote about an intersection of trails “from which the Main Trail turns south; the Heartbreak Ridge Trail goes east; and an unnamed side trail goes north…” As I passed the ferns two Saturdays ago, I was walking on the Main Trail and heading for that intersection, eager to check out the Heartbreak Ridge since I skipped it on my prior visit.

After travelling east through pine flatwoods, the Main Trail arrives at the intersection a half-mile from the parking lot, at a spot where the forest abruptly switches from a dry one dominated by softwoods to a damp one dominated by hardwoods. The mucky earth is scoured by the wallows of wild boars:

This forest becomes so dense you could be standing next to a large animal and not see it:

That morning, it was very obvious that some of its sights were early signs of spring:

If you hike the Heartbreak Ridge Trail, you will notice that the sign describes it as “extremely difficult.” This being Florida, that description is clearly an exaggeration, but the trail does have lots of roots that warrant caution and could challenge a mountain biker. Also, you won’t see anything resembling a ridge, but don’t worry: The forest’s beauty makes up for its lack of elevation change.

Approximately five minutes after stepping onto the Heartbreak Ridge Trail you reach an unsigned intersection with another trail. Continuing straight, the Heartbreak Ridge crosses one of its two wooden footbridges before shifting its direction southward:

It took me twenty minutes to hike the entirety of the Heartbreak Ridge. It ends by emptying onto another trail, which I can only assume is the Main Trail because there was no sign to identify it.

I would have kept going to determine whether this “new” trail was indeed the Main Trail, but I had promised to be home at an early hour, so I turned around and made my way back through the morning mist, listening to the insistent chatter of squirrels -- one of whom was kind enough to alleviate my earlier frustration by allowing me to take his picture:

Happy Trails!

Misty Mornin' Hop, Part One

Fog wrapped itself around the forest shortly before seven a.m. on Saturday. After a two-month absence, I was happy to be back in Lower Hillsborough Wilderness Preserve and checking out some trails I skipped during prior visits.

I stepped onto the Main Trail from the same trailhead mentioned in my November 29th post, and within seconds the scenery inverted the message of that old saying about missing the forest for the trees. This forest was foggy, all right, but now that I was seeing it up close, fog became the last thing I noticed. Instead I was struck by all the little things that usually get overlooked, like contours on bark and dew drops on leaves:

There were signs that spring is knocking on our door. While many of the deciduous trees remained leafless, some were sporting bright green leaf buds, and new maple leaves were especially abundant. A scattering of shed blossoms on the ground revealed that the Carolina jessamine, a tree-faring vine, has already completed its yearly bloom:

A few minutes from the trailhead I came to a T intersection and turned left, onto a side trail that my November 29th post described as going “south to points that are unknown to me.” On this day I was going to find out what those points are.

A chorus of birdsong lightened the mood as the trail traveled downhill into a glade. Although I am not typically given to thoughts of fantasy, the word “enchanting” is what came to mind when I saw the look of its emerald hue in the fog-softened light. Having heard Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” the night before, I thought of that song’s allusions to Tolkien and lyrics about “days of old when magic filled the air.”

About two-tenths of a mile after turning onto this trail I arrived at the Hillsborough River, along whose bank the trail travels in both directions:

I opted to go right and head in the opposite direction from the road. A plump red cardinal flitted around a riverside bush and my attempts to photograph him were not successful. Fortunately, the trail’s faint route proved to be a good photo subject in its own right, with water to its left and open woods to its right:

Eventually it petered out among a cluster of cypress knees. Navigation-wise, it would have been easy to keep walking since all the trail was doing was following the river; however, knowing this area is home to large numbers of alligators and cottonmouths, I did an about face after going only 50 or so steps beyond the blazed path.

After all, this was not the only trail I wanted to explore that morning. And with that in mind, I started heading east…

LHW: Morris Bridge

The Hillsborough River forked, as it is wont to do downstream from the state park that bears its name. The wide branch went to the east while the skinny one went to the west:

Eventually those branches re-converge, but all that really mattered to me that morning was this: The parts of Lower Hillsborough Wilderness Preserve that can be accessed from where I was standing, in Morris Bridge Park, are among the most interesting our area has to offer.

Morris Bridge Park is one of several separately named sections of the preserve. At 106 acres, it is far from the biggest and accounts for less than seven-tenths of one percent of the total acreage, but who cares? Those 106 acres are lovely, and the Main Trail, which passes through them, leads you out into the preserve’s wide “unincorporated” reaches.

To reach the park, drive 3.8 miles east of I-75 on Fletcher Avenue, which becomes Morris Bridge Road along the way. The sign for the park is on the left side of the road, but there are parking lots on both sides. It doesn’t matter which one you choose because they are linked by a boardwalk underneath Morris Bridge; however, you may want to know that the bathrooms are on the left.

From the left-side parking lot it is easy to spot the arching footbridge that marks one of two trailheads on that side of the road. It crosses the skinny branch of the river and deposits you on a boardwalk, over on the island which results from it forking. The boardwalk offers several good river views while taking you on a quarter-mile loop through the woods:

The other trail on this side is an earthen one called the Buteo Trail, which totals a half-mile and loops through the forest on the “mainland side” of the skinny branch. To reach it, walk along the entry road back toward the spot where you turned off of Morris Bridge Road. The trailhead is obvious and marked by the sign/map pictured below. The Buteo Trail is “self-guided” in that it has 19 numbered posts identifying various sights; you can find out what each post is about by taking a brochure from the dispenser at the trailhead.

As attractive as everything is on the left side of the road, the right side is where your thirst for exploring is most likely to be sated. Near the sheltered picnic tables on that side is the beginning of the Bald Cypress Trail: a 1½-mile lollipop loop that tracks along the river bank for part of the way and slips away from it, into the riverine forest, for the rest. I suspect you would find much of this trail to be under water if you visited during the rainy season:

When Sarah and I were here a few weeks ago, we did not complete the entirety of the Bald Cypress Trail because she started complaining of hunger and about mosquitoes, and I couldn’t deny that it was about time for her to eat. So we made our way back to those picnic tables and scarfed down some of the contents of my backpack.

Then she mentioned that she wanted to hike the other trail that departs from this side. The signs said it would lead to a river overlook after one mile. Being an outdoorsman at heart, I figured that when a seven-year-old identifies a part of the outdoors she wants to explore, you don’t discourage her, so off we went.

The trail in question was actually a segment of the Main Trail, which I mentioned above and in my previous post. On this day we followed it south from the parking lot and it soon turned east into a palmetto field. We had gone a little more than a half-mile when we reached an intersection from which the Main Trail turns south; the Heartbreak Ridge Trail goes east; and an unnamed side trail goes north to the overlook.

Obviously we turned north (left) and went along on our merry way. We were now out of the palmettos and into a forest where you could not look in any direction without seeing water. The trail was wide enough to drive a car on and perched just above its surroundings, almost like an abandoned railroad route, to keep it dry:

Sarah thoroughly enjoyed the overlook where it dead-ended:

On our way back to the car we encountered a box turtle crossing the path:

Sarah decided to “help” it cross, and after picking it up and turning it over she announced that she had never known what a turtle’s belly looks like. She asked me to take a picture of her holding it, with its belly on display, and I obliged:

We noticed something else interesting on our return -- topography! Glancing off at an angle, we saw the ground rise visibly in what resembled a small Indian mound, and we set off to climb it. It was no more than 10 feet from bottom to top, but in Florida you take what you can get:

I was surprised to find that this hill did not simply drop down on the other side. Instead it continued in an elongated, ridge-like manner, and Sarah skipped along it happy as a clam:

Morris Bridge Park is an entry point to a world you should be sure to see. Happy Trails!

LHW: Flatwoods from the south

The word “primeval” occurred to me when I took a step and felt the carpet of leaves press ever so slightly into the muck below. The ground was spongy even though we were a half-mile from the river and it had been a long time since the last significant rain.

Not that I should have been surprised. After all, we were in the subtropics and walking through what is known as a floodplain forest. Realizing it probably wasn’t a good idea to have left the marked trail with my seven-year-old daughter in tow, I guided Sarah back to the footbridge from which we had hopped down into this gully (creek bed?) and we resumed our original course.

My previous post detailed a hike I took after driving into the Flatwoods Park section of Lower Hillsborough Wilderness Preserve. On this day, however, I chose to enter Flatwoods on foot, by hiking the Main Trail from farther south in the preserve.

The Main Trail winds 20 miles through Lower Hillsborough Wilderness and along its route links up with many other trails. Sarah and I stepped onto it at the spot where it departs from the west shoulder of Morris Bridge Road, just north of Morris Bridge itself. The spot is marked by this sign on the opposite side of the road:

From here the road runs southwest to northeast while the trail runs south to north, so the two depart from each other at a 45-degree angle. The floodplain forest, through which you travel early on, has a decidedly jungle-like appearance:

Because Lower Hillsborough Wilderness is a continuous preserve whose separately named sections are not partitioned, there is no way to tell when you officially enter Flatwoods Park out on the trail. Nonetheless, it is easy to tell when you enter the habitat for which it is named.

Here in Florida, mere inches of elevation change can drastically alter the landscape. On this portion of the Main Trail you will never get the sense that you have climbed, but you will definitely notice when you have left the floodplain forest and entered the flatwood forest. The former is damp, dark, and jungly, while the latter is dry and sunny. The former is marked by oaks and a variety of palms, while the latter is marked by pines and saw palmettos.

Rather than a carpet of leaves beside the trail, the flatwood offers up a carpet of pine needles. On the day we were there, it also offered up proof that wild hogs are common in the preserve. Check out these wallows that hogs made right on the trail:

A little more than a mile after departing Morris Bridge Road, the Main Trail reaches Flatwoods Park’s east road right at the spot where the road turns. Other than backtracking, your options are to go right and follow the road to the visitor center; go straight and follow it to its end, which is where I started the hike described in my previous post; or go left on a seven-mile paved trail from which you can access several more unpaved paths.

Because Sarah had to go to the bathroom and did not want to pee in the woods, we hoofed it to the visitor center. After she used the ladies room, we sat at a picnic table and ate some of the food that was stashed in my backpack. Along the roadside between the trail and the visitor center we saw some autumn foliage:

Walking with Sarah slowed me down because she kept stopping to look at tracks (both real and imagined) and she wanted to inspect every nook and cranny of the woods to figure out what animals live there. But I was not about to complain because it is awesome to see her enthused and curious about the outdoors. And it was adorable when she decided to fashion a palmetto frond into a natural parasol:

The Main Trail is easy to follow, partly because it is marked by numbered signposts. Along the portion we hiked are two side trails, one of which goes west and eventually intersects with the paved trail mentioned above. The other one goes south to points that are unknown to me.

Our slow pace, coupled with my knowledge that we were needed at home to help out with my five-month-old son, kept us from exploring the side trails that morning. But I (or we) will return and do that before long, and you can expect a report when that happens.

The reach the trailhead we used, take I-75 to the Fletcher Avenue exit and drive east for four miles. Physically, there is nothing to prevent you from simply parking on the roadside and stepping onto the trail, but I suspect that as far as the county is concerned, you are supposed to park at Morris Bridge Park and walk along the road to the trailhead. That way you are prompted to fork over the $2 fee at the pay center in the parking lot.

Morris Bridge Park is located just before Morris Bridge with parking lots on both sides of the road. You will have to walk across the bridge, whose shoulder is amply wide, and from there it is 0.2 miles to the trailhead.

Happy Trails!