Catfish Creek Preserve State Park is located a bit off the beaten path in Dundee, Florida. This area is a part of the Lake Wales Ridge. The trailhead is just a small parking lot with some signage touting the preserve as an award winner. My guidebook directed us to head off to the right after parking where we would pick up a trail map in the red mailbox. She wasn’t kidding, either, there was a red mailbox and when we opened it there were trail maps inside. Cool!
Lisa and I arrived at 2:45 pm and set off on our hike. At that time the temperature had reached a high of 53. It didn’t get any warmer that day. The author estimated it would take 2 hours to hike a 3.5 mile perimeter trail. The book warned that the trail was for people who were looking for a physical challenge. I’m going to have to take these warnings more seriously. And we should probably start our hikes earlier so we don’t have to worry about nightfall catching us.
Just like last time I wrote down the gist of the directions on a note card and took that with us. Note to self – it’s hard enough to read a map, written directions are just not my forte. We started on the trail leading off to the right and immediately noticed the marker numbers that were described in the book. We had to walk to marker 8 and then turn right. Well, not exactly – that’s not what my instructions said, but that’s what my mind read. We were actually supposed to come to marker 8 where we would then see marker 12 intersecting and turn left. Kind of different, don’t you think? Either way we never saw marker 8 or marker 12, but we did see markers 13 – 16 so we followed those. We were on red and white blazed trails, which seemed close enough to the white blazes we should have been following at the time.
The first thing we noticed was that, just as the book warned, the trails were all loose sand. Many of the trails were shared with equestrians which is why they were so loosely packed. We also noticed that the trail was very hilly, giving us a challenging walk (to be honest this is what I was looking for, although I did not share that information with Lisa prior to the hike in case she had any thoughts of backing out, lol). I brought my trekking poles, the ones Dana and Nicole gave me for Christmas; based on the description of the trail I thought this would be a great place to try them out. They were a big help at keeping my balance uphill and downhill on the uneven terrain. It took a while to get the height and wrist straps the way I wanted them so I’m glad I chose to use this as a test run.
While walking up one of the hills I was looking down, of course, to make sure my feet were working properly (falling on a hike doesn’t sound like much fun) and I saw a snake. Well, I saw Lisa’s feet right next to a snake. So I tell her, “Hey, isn’t that a snake?” And she says “Where?” I say “Right there, you could be stepping on it.” Sure enough, it was a snake – really skinny, about 2 feet long, and orange and black. It looked alive but it didn’t move, so perhaps it was sunning itself to warm up. We took several pictures, and then thought we shouldn’t push our luck since we couldn’t tell whether the head was triangle or round. For the record, neither Lisa nor I freaked out about the snake. I was proud of us for that, although in retrospect perhaps we should have been a little more worried that Lisa almost stepped on a snake without seeing it and that I walked towards the snake rather than running away (I needed a picture).
When we reached marker 16 I knew that we had a problem, because by this time I had noticed that we should have reached marker 12, which I’d never seen. My solution to the problem was to keep walking straight. The numbers were going up and eventually we were supposed to arrive at 24, so it seemed logical that straight was the right way. As we walked through a gate (clue #1) and over a very steep hill, I noticed there were no more marker numbers (clue #2). About 15 minutes later I finally admitted to Lisa that we might be lost. Just then we reached number 77. Yes, lost – 77 was not on my card anywhere. Lisa suggested that I look at the trail map – duh. I pulled out that cool trail map we found in the mailbox and, yes, oops, 77 was way off the trail we should have been on. In fact this trail was leading us out into the unchartered wilderness and was in no way related to the perimeter walk we were originally on.
We headed back over that steep hill, retracing our steps in hopes of rejoining our trail. When we reached marker 16 we had to choose left or right (because straight would presumably take us back to the beginning). I looked at the map and finally decided we should go left. Yes, left. Yes, I’m sure, left. As we walked we saw the correctly marked blazes and followed the numbers up 18, 19… 19, we had to turn at 19 if we were going to see the statue. It’s at this point I can finally admit I should be giving Lisa more information about these walks before we take them. She’s being an incredibly good sport at letting me plan the whole thing, so I should probably warn her about things like hills, and sand, and snakes, and statues.
The statue is of the founder of the preserve, Allan David Broussard, and is one of the highlights of the walk. We found it (I’m so proud of us) atop one of the tallest hills yet, and the view from up there overlooking nearby ponds and forest was beautiful. Each walk needs its own picture so the statue picture will symbolize Hike #2. Hike #1’s picture is Trevor and I at the end of the walk. I managed to get the tops of my trekking poles into the picture. Lisa managed to drop her phone in the sand/dirt for the second consecutive hike.
Lisa started tracking deer prints as we walked; they eventually led off into the forest. There was another print too – she says large cat (i.e. panther), I said perhaps dog (I’m not a tracker), but whatever animal it was followed the deer off into the forest. Interesting.
Right after seeing marker 24 we went off course again and ended up at marker 38 (I was looking for marker 23). We couldn’t find our way past the 30’s so we backtracked to 24 and walked around the other way. While we were backtracking we saw numbers that I promise weren’t there the first time (if they had been, I would have seen them and known we were walking the wrong way). Lisa wondered how we could have missed all these things. My theory was that perhaps we were no longer actually walking; we might still be laying on the trail somewhere. Maybe the snake had gotten us. Eventually we found marker 24, though, so that theory went out the window.
We wrapped our hike up after 2 hours and 20 minutes, arriving back at the car just before dark. This is a hike we’ll need to do again. First of all it’s a good way to judge our fitness, and second of all we did not do the trail we were supposed to walk – our trail was some mishmash of trails intertwining together making no clear path since several times we had to backtrack to find our way again. I’m very happy that despite our wanderings we did find the statue. I’m also glad we did such a difficult walk early in our sequence, because we should feel differently the next time we hike it (meaning, we should be in better shape, lol) and perhaps we will have improved our sense of direction (or else we’ll learn how to read a map). For now our legs were sore and our fingers were frozen but we had accomplished something (and made it out of the woods before dark) and that felt good. What felt even better was the hot bubble bath I took when I got home.
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