A Greenway Good Morning, hikers!

I slayed it yesterday, hikers.  If I still had my official FTA data book, could tell you exactly how bad I slayed it, but I left that rascal with Tom, along with a ton of other paperwork and references I accumulated over the trail.  My well rested eyes tell me I easily busted 20 miles fully packed yesterday, and that’s what I’m talking about. 

And it was a swamp thing, yall.  Wet pine forests, low, low, wetlands and a an endless supply of orange blazes are all a man needs to keep going until he finds some high and dry terra firma. 

And when I did, I found myself near one of the great engineering debacles in Florida history, the eastern end of the Cross Florida Barge Canal.  Believe it or not, someone thought it might be a good idea to dig a damn canal across the peninsula to accommodate barge traffic from the Gulf Of Mexico to the St Johns River.  I’m serious.  Excessive drinking (and, obviously, this mass imbibing took place without a letup in the highest offices in the state and federal government) is the only explanation I can conjure that makes idiocy of this magnitude remotely fathomable.

Well, it seems someone finally half-sobered up and, at seeing a couple dozen pieces of big iron digging a hole up across the state yelled out “What in the hell are we doing here???”  This exclaimed interrogatory must’ve awakened everyone else, and, as they emerged bleary -eyed from beneath the plans table, and swallowed down a couple of very strong cups of coffee – they called their wives and lied about how many fish they caught on their trip and went home.

What they left behind was the Rodman Reservoir, which forms a good sized lake bristling with bleached white tree snags and pleasure boats loosed into it by pink people hauling boat trailers with out-of-state tags. 

Well, my oatmeal dinner -I just couldn’t eat anything else tonight – and a warm sleeping bag awaits my tired and nonsense writing head.  I could sleep on a bed of nails right now.

Low battery, Shut-eye Cheers from the Florida Trail.  Miguel

PS- You know, writing this blog is like talking to you.  Even though you aren’t walking this trail with me, when I write to you, it’s like we’re sitting in front of our tents laughing about the day we had together.  Now all I have to do is find someplace to send all this stuff to you so you can actually read it.