Trail Bikers at San Felasco (not me)
(click on photo for trail info)
No, I did not have heart issues! I am referring to my mountain bike ride on the new trail at San Felasco Hammock State Park informally named the Defibrillator. It is the most recent trail to be added out there a couple months ago. It is a 2.5 mile single track loop & has what I believe is the most vertical elevation change per mile of any trail in peninsular Florida. Sorry to be bragging, but I have been biking quite strong lately and am proud I managed to do 5 straight laps this afternoon without putting my foot down. Not the fastest pace, but made all the hills each time including one that is quite steep in 3 places and long. Not that technical yet as erosion has yet to expose the roots, but it is necessary to maintain a certain amount of speed to keep your track on the ups. Didn’t use the Granny gear, but did go to the lowest gear using the middle chain ring on that steepest hill. Other nice part was that I timed it between storms this afternoon. It had come close to raining, but ended out missing the park & dumped to the south in Gainesville instead. The result was cloud cover, breeze & temperatures in the 70s. Best part, is I had the whole trail to myself (my buddy Ben was jogging back on the Cellon Creek Loop). Between it being Friday afternoon and the scary looking skies, everyone else must have been scared off!
I also witnessed the results of an apparently fertile Spring! I nearly ran over a couple turkey poults that were hunkered down in the middle of the trail. There must have been about 10 of these cute little birds & their momma made quite a fuss when I came up on them in the trail. Also ran into a bunch of baby piglets and their momma 3 times as I did my loop. They were also very cute only about 8 inches long & could have scooped a couple up the first time as they were separated from their mom and they could not make it across the trail before I cut them off. Being feral hogs, they had quite the color variation, with the cutest couple being white with black spots.
Unfortunately the hog population is way out of hand at this park right now & they really destroy the native understory vegetation. The park used to trap a bunch to keep the population under control. But being this is Florida and budget constraints always screw up everything the government tries to do, they ran out of money for their contractor allowing the population to explode. Now to get it back in control, they will have to spend way more than they would have if they just kept it going in the first place. Similar government waste can be seen on exotic plant control at this park. A few years back, they contracted someone to kill all the Exotic Tung Nut trees out there at great expense and use of herbicide. However, they did not bother to come back the next year and kill the seedlings. So again, it has as many or more than when they started, our tax payer dollar goes to waste & this failure can now be used to justify not spending more funds on control. I did actually spend several days walking around pulling seedlings when they were young enough to pull easy, but I could only hit certain areas & now they are way to big to pull by hand. Reminds me why I had to quit my government job working for the Water Management District.
Anyway, I do really enjoy the trails out there as they have over 30 miles of single track now! As an ecologist, I do question the placement of some of the trails that are going in fairly undisturbed habitat & will likely result in erosion problems. They also have a tendency to go a little to far down slopes that have active seepage during wet times of the year (of course they build the trails during the dry winter & sometimes miss this fact). But all & all, they do try to do a good job & appear to be getting better at trail placement by not placing too many long stretches that don’t have a place the water can flow off the trail to minimize the rilling effect. They certainly do provide a lot of recreational enjoyment & bring many paying visitors to the park. There is a very active group of folks that maintain these trails & I have much appreciation for the work they do (I need to drag out early one Saturday to pitch in!).
So that was my nice afternoon start to the Memorial Day weekend! I topped it off with a nice Sushi dinner. Hoping to make it to Cedar Key for Kayaking on Sunday! I hope you all have a good weekend too!
