Telling My Story Page By Page: I Made It to 50!

Sunday, August 5, 2012

I Made It to 50!

50 hikes, that is! This weekend, in the company of Mom, Trevor and Trinity, I finished the last of the 50 hikes outlined in Sandra Friend's Guidebook "50 Hikes in Central Florida." And while some of them were admittedly harder than others, and on some of them we got quite lost (including this last one) and didn't exactly follow the trail laid out in the book, I'm still very satisfied with this accomplishment. Over the last 20 months I have:

visited 50 places that I had never been before,
discovered the joys of hiking in Florida,
realized there are hundreds of hikes available in our surrounding area that can be explored as day trips,
exposed my family to a world of outdoor fun nearly in our own backyard,
pushed myself to physical challenges greater than reaching for the remote control,
learned more about Florida's environment, wildlife, and history,
glimpsed that wildlife in the form of fox squirrels, alligator turtles, gopher tortoises, alligators, deer, and even a not quite sighted Florida Black Bear,
and become a more experienced (and safer) hiker.

I really am over the moon that I made my goal - perhaps not quite on my original aggressive timeline, but in a reasonable amount of time. So many people supported me in this endeavor, by hiking with me or by listening to my encounters after the fact - especially Mom, Dad, John, Lisa, Trevor, Trinity, Nicole, Dana, Logan, Libby and Bianca. In fact, of that list, only Nicole didn't actually make it onto a hike (but I know she wanted to be there). And now, before we move on to Life After 50 Hikes (did I mention there are over 600 trails in the State of Florida just waiting for me to discover them?!), let's look at a few more layouts from the hikes we completed.

Hike #6 - Lake Kissimmee State Park (broken up into 2 day hikes) - clicking on an image will take you to one of my galleries where you can view it larger and see the credits.