On my recent two-month snowbird trip, I did a lot of trail hiking in Florida State Forests and Parks. At one of those trailheads, I found a brochure on the Florida State TrailWalker Program**. Now, after hiking 10 of the trails on the program list, I am an official Florida Trail Walker -- jacket patch and all. It took a bit of driving around to get to the "right" forests, but I got it done. Here are the details.

From my snowbirding base near Palatka, on January 10th I went 30 miles south to hike Mud Springs Trail (1.7 miles) and John's Landing Trail (4.5 miles) in the Welaka State Forest. On January 15th, I drove north 20 miles to the Etoniah State Forest and hiked the 4.8 mile Longleaf Pine Trail.

A month later, I did a combination 80-mile trip to the Jacksonville area to hike the Adams Wilderness Trail (1.2 miles) in Cary State Forest, plus the Fire and Water Trail (1.0 miles) and Black Creek Trail (5.0 miles) in Jennings State Forest. The very next day, I hiked the 1.8 mile Up and Down Lake Trail at Duval Moore State Forest (which was just 3 miles from my home base).

Finally, on February 20th I drove 75 miles to the Withlacoochee area and hiked the Holly Hammock Trail (2.3 miles) at Ross Prairie State Forest, and the Tidewater (3.0 miles) and Black Prong (3.5 miles) trails in Goethe State Forest.

All in all, I covered 7 Florida State Forests, 10 trails and 28.8 hiking miles. But not "just" for the TrailWalker patch. Have I mentioned I LOVE hiking? (