Too much nature

We're renting a home in Spruce Creek Country Club, a Del Webb community near Ocala, Florida (more about this in a future post). After a few months of abandoning ourselves to tennis, lounging by the pool and working on my next novel, we decided to get back to exploring.

One of the intersections leading to the trail head.

Today we visited Ocala National Forest. Two years ago we spent a day driving through the Everglades and three years ago we explored the Audubon Swamp Garden at Magnolia Plantation near Charleston, but neither prepared us for Sinkhole Trail. 

Yeah, sinkhole.

The yellow rat snake who welcomed us to the trail.

Five feet into the trail we encountered a yellow rat snake slithering across the path. (I think it was 20 feet long, but the picture I grabbed is apparently distorted because the snake only looks five feet long.) Farther along we came to the first of several warning signs, this one explaining how we should act if we encounter a 300 pound black bear. (Make noise and slowly back away. I'm thinking scream, wet my pants and run.) Later signs warned us of ticks and chiggers, unstable terrain and snakes.

They forgot to mention spiders.

After reaching the edge of the sinkhole, which lay somewhere beyond a wooden railing, obscured by dense foliage – in fact the entire trail was claustrophobic, the side brush so thick that the effect was like walking in a dense green tunnel, with the added attraction of snakes, bears and ticks – we turned up a side trail to return to the parking lot.

The trail.

This trail, apparently seldom used, was decorated with rotted, fallen trees that blocked the trail and festooned with low hanging spider webs whose architects were the size of a child's fist. The webs themselves were heavy and yellow, like heavy fishing line.

We spent the return walk watching overhead for spiders and trying to clear the webs so that we could pass, examining the ground for snakes, torn between running in terror or cautiously tiptoeing, all the while studiously ignoring sounds from the underbrush.

We're going to have to work on this outdoor exploring attitude. In the meantime, next trip is west toward Tampa and the Gulf of Mexico.