I completed the White Loop Trail at Jonathan Dickinson State Park on New Year’s Day and enjoyed it enough to bring me back for more! This time, my bestie, Barb, joined me, and we hiked the 4.9 miles of the Green Loop Trail in just under two hours.
If you come from almost anyplace other than Florida, you will find the Florida trails different. Mainly flat and often sandy, in many cases, there is little or no shade, but dang, you are out in nature in beautiful sunny Florida surrounded by the Florida scrub and who knows what else.
This was a Monday holiday, so there were others around the park on bikes and on foot. The campsites were full. We hiked the Green Loop Trail, going counterclockwise. On the east side of the trail, we trudged through sugar sand as we headed north with the sun at our backs. The trail was narrower on this side with some shade and even some ups and downs!
We walked along the railroad tracks on the west side of the trail—the same tracks that bordered the White Loop I hiked on New Year’s. This trail was wider and paved in areas. Although this made the hike faster, we enjoyed the narrower sugar sand path and the added work it required more. Heading south, we started to see mountain bikers flying along their trails to our east but very little wild life other than that. The south end of the trail brought us to a lake and some welcomed shade—a short break for us before we ended our hike.
Footprints and Ripples 