Hike #17 - Point Washington State Forest, Florida

Other than visiting grandma and grandpa, our family has not taken a family vacation in ten years.  We had one kid then. This summer we loaded up and headed to Grayton Beach State Park in the Destin, Florida area.

We have stayed in Grayton before, and we came back for several reasons.  First, the state park has cabins that are significantly cheaper than most of the rentals in the area. Second, the state park has a private beach with very few people and rangers who monitor the water for riptides and dangerous marine life (sharks, jellyfish, sea lice, oh my!).  We spent most days in the water, but we couldn't let the whole trip go by without at least one hike.  The trail was technically Point Washington State Forest, but it seemed that it ran together with some of the Grayton trails.  In the future though, we might pass on hiking in Florida.

Reasons we prefer Arkansas hiking to Florida hiking:

1. Wildlife - The sign at the trailhead warns hikers of rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and coral snakes.  The only one we don't have in Arkansas is coral snakes, and we replace them with copperheads.  However, in our previous 50+ miles in Arkansas this year, we have see a total of zero snakes. On this trail we saw two, and they were big, and they were right on the edge of the trail.  It put us all on edge for the entire time.  This doesn't even consider the "watch out for gators" sign by the lake we passed.
2. Terrain - This trail is flat!  There was zero elevation change, and zero rocks to see or climb.  The trail was sand, sand, and more sand.  Everyone can tolerate sand at the beach, but once you leave the beach it is just a nuisance that you can't wait to get rid of.
3. Heat - For some reason people expect Florida to be hot, but the temperatures there are no hotter than the temperatures at home.  And don't say "it's not the heat, it's the humidity," because Arkansas has crazy humidity too.  However, the heat was brutal on this trail.  We came up with two factors.  First, in Arkansas you are usually hiking in the woods with a nice canopy of hardwood trees above.  Here you have scrawny pine trees if you have anything.  Second, below the Arkansas canopy you have leaf strewn brown dirt.  Here you have the white sand reflecting as much sunlight up at you from the ground as you have the sun beating down on you from above. Let's just say, the ocean felt particularly nice when we got back.  

(Don't worry, the mohawk went away as soon as we left the beach.)

Our family unanimously agrees that hiking in Arkansas is better.  Not that we doubted it before.

Travel time from home: 12 hours, 20 minutes (plus 3 hours worth of bathroom breaks)
Today's miles: 4.56
Remaining miles: 42.29

Hike #16 - Mt. Kessler (Part 2)

As the boys' Cub Scout pack has gotten more active, they have started to put a lot of hikes on the schedule.  Families are always invited to these hikes, so we try to take advantage when we can.  Today the pack hit Mt. Kessler, which we have already done once this year.  You can never get tired of Rock City.


The highlight for us today was that we crossed the 50 mile threshold!  We hit it exactly at the best view on the trail. 50 miles before the halfway point of the year puts us ahead of pace. On we go!


Travel time from home: 15 minutes
Today's miles: 4.42
Remaining miles: 46.85

Hike #15 - Lake Wedington

If we ever want to take a quick camp trip that is nice but not far away, we head to Lake Wedington. We just wrapped up one such trip with some friends.  Even though we had camped here before, we had never done the Lake Wedington trail.  We were there for the camping, and we did the hike just to add some miles without much thought for the trail.  The trail turned out to be spectacular.  

Although the trailhead is only about a quarter mile from the camp ground, the road to get there is windy and cars move quickly, we drove to the trailhead.  Earlier in the day we had used the swimming area and it was the typical muddy water that you find at any day use swimming area.  Along the trail though the water was crystal clear.  You could easily see eight inch fish swimming just by the shore.  Of the 1.83 miles we hiked, at least 1.5 of them were right on the water, which was beautiful as the sun set.  We knew there was a waterfall on the trail, but we weren't expecting much.  The trail isn't very well marked and some places look like makeshift offshoots of the main trail, so we weren't even sure we would find the waterfall.  Once we did though, we were very impressed.  The waterfall is part of the spillway from the lake, so I guess it is technically man-made, but we have noticed that kids don't really care about that kind of stuff.  

The kids of course were not satisfied just looking at it from the bottom, so we had to try to get to the top.  This added another level to the adventure.  At the top of the waterfall there was a wide stone wall that channeled the lake water to the waterfall spillway.  We realized we could either turn around and backtrack the trail, or we could scale the wall and hike along he levy back to the trail.  It wasn't a very tough decision.  (Earlier we had seen that there was a trail across the levy and that it did connect to the main trail.)  

This is definitely a hike we would do again and recommend to others.  It would be great to see the waterfall after some big rains when the lake is up. 

Travel time from home: 45 minutes

Today's miles: 1.83

Remaining miles: 51.27