This is the first of my Hike Series posts. Don't worry, if you're not a hiker, they aren't going to take over the blog, lol. I'm just introducing a little variety, in my life and on here.
I invited Lisa and Trevor to join me yesterday on my inaugural hike of the 50 Hikes in Central Florida I hope to complete this year. The Circle B Bar Reserve off of 540 in Lakeland (going towards Winter Haven, past PCC) is a Wetlands Restoration Project off of Lake Hancock. The guidebook promised us a 4.4 mile hike with wildlife and flora. Not wanting to take the guidebook onto the hiking trail, I wrote the hiking directions on an index card and brought that with instead.
Finding the Circle B Bar Reserve was easy enough, it's well-marked on 540. We arrived just before 9 am, knowing the nature center was open from 9 - 4. We got off to a rocky start once there, though - I parked too soon. I saw a few cars parked and that was that, I parked there. When we got out of the car I mentioned that I was expecting a nature center, but a brisk walk down the paved road didn't turn up anything so we decided to begin our hike and drive around looking for the nature center later. As it turns out, there is a much larger (and more populated) parking area about a mile up the road, next to the nature center.
We hopped onto the trail and started walking at a brisk pace. Though it's been a cold winter here, there was still some foliage to see and the book was right, this is an awesome place for bird watching. We saw a variety of herons, egrets, cranes and ducks as we walked along the trail. We walked up Heron Hideout Trail until we found Eagle Roost Trail, then we turned left. The trails were busier than I expected; there were a lot of photographers out and about (with some serious cameras and in some cases tripods, photographing nature and probably the birds in particular). Sprinkled along the trail are various informational signs - for example, one on alligators informed us that if alligator eggs hatch in temperatures below 86 degrees, they are likely to be female, whereas if they hatch in temperatures above 93 degrees they are likely to be males.
We came across a large cluster of empty snail shells along the marshes that lined Eagle Roost Trail, just before we got to the intersection with Alligator Alley. I wasn't even expecting to find shells on a freshwater lake let alone the number and size of these. We continued past Alligator Alley and soon Eagle Roost Trail turned into Wading Bird Way. I've named it Stinky Dead Fish Trail. Lake Hancock is home to fish that can't handle cold weather, and as I've said we've had an unusually cold winter this year. The result is that many of the fish in Lake Hancock have died, and the stench is becoming powerful (I'm sure it would have been even worse if we hadn't been hiking in 50 degree weather). Now you might think that we saw the dead fish by looking into the lake and marshes that line the trails. That's not where we saw them - the dead fish were scattered along the sides of the trail. I'm assuming the big cranes and egrets that inhabit the area are grabbing the dead fish from the water and dropping their remains on the trail. Many of the ones we saw were shells - just their skins/scales - and skeletons - literally, fish skeletons neatly picked of all fish meat. It was quite a sight.
Wading Bird Way ended at a windmill and we turned right on Windmill Whisper Trail. This led back away from the marshes (in rainy season, though, I'm pretty sure that trail would be amidst wetlands as well) and took us back to our starting point, the car.
We got into the car at 8,000 steps (per my new slim pedometer) and drove down the road to find the nature center where we should have started. We would have walked at least part of Alligator Alley if we had started there. This is where Trevor insisted there was an indoor playground - and he was right, there was. Inside the nature center they had an information booth with a sign-in sheet and trail maps, an interactive children's center with coloring activities and other information, and a giant tree and hallowed out log that the kids could climb up to a perch, or tunnel under into a replica of a stormwater drain. There were interactive videos and other visual aids in there to teach visitors about stormwater run-off, water conservation, Native American history, and about the species that live on the Reserve. We even saw a fish skeleton that looked exactly like what we'd seen out on the hike.
After letting Trevor play in the Nature Center we went back out to the trails for one last look. We took the Lost Bridge Trail that was not a part of the path mapped out in the book, and I would guess that's because it's an Out and Back hike rather than a loop. We walked the trail which meanders through a deserted orange grove, found the lost bridge, walked across it (it was a very long bridge that probably keeps visitors from getting their feet wet during rainy season), let Trevor empty "rocks" from his shoes, and walked back. By the time we were done we had 10,000 steps. Not a bad day's work.
So, Hike #1 which is #11 in the book was a success, and a lot of fun. The nature center is impressive and the trails are interesting and easy-to-follow. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is hardest, I rate this hike a 2.
