FL;Lake Wales Ridge state forest;Feb 16-18, 2018 The Sherpa Hang

[MAD777]

Found another Photo. This is the early Saturday morning fog from my hammock. The fog burned off quickly after sunrise.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[richtorfla]

Found another Photo. This is the early Saturday morning fog from my hammock. The fog burned off quickly after sunrise.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Always a cool view waking up to the fog! Then you realize how wet everything will be when you pack it up! Ha ha! I enjoy the fog too! I like when you see it roll in at night!
Then I get scared and think about Vampires!

[samsara]

I see that I missed another one... there isn't much that I miss about FL but living on the forest and camping/hiking with my hammock family make up most of the list! We had a mild winter up here until about a week ago and have been having an extremely weird February since then. We set an all time record low for Feb 20 (it was -6 at the airport) and have had more snow this week (with up to a foot more predicted for the next week) than we had in all of the rest of winter. I love it!!

I know that the season is coming to a close down there, but as always... say hi to the gang and throw an extra log on the fire for me

[MAD777]

Dave, it's great to hear from you! Lake Wales Ridge will always be your backyard in our minds! And it's still my favorite place to hang!

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[samsara]

What's not to love? Beautiful scenery, short to medium length hikes and enough camp sites to fill a weekend, water at almost all sites, and the occasional chupacabra

Dave, it's great to hear from you! Lake Wales Ridge will always be your backyard in our minds! And it's still my favorite place to hang!

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[richtorfla]

Love that Arbuckle area too! Miss seeing ya around samsara! Good to see you are checking up on us from time to time! Let us know when you are coming back down to visit when you need to thaw out!!!

[olddog]

Hello samsara. Good to hear from you. You are missed but normally end up in the campfire conversations. Quite some changes since you left. The overflow parking area is now a 10 site campground four which are shell pads for RV's with a large pavilion. Primarily for hunters. They have also turned reservations over to Reserve America which sucks. Now a weekend hike and hang at two sites requires two separate reservations with two reservation fees one per site. Only 5 people and 2 vehicles per reservation. But Jeanne and Cody both implied that we were special since you had set us up down there. Mother Nature did a good job of pruning with Irma which was probably overdue. Plenty of firewood to clean up.It would be great to see you again around the campfire.

[samsara]

The intended purpose for that site (many years ago but never moved forward due to lack of funding) was a camping area for people with horses. We had already put in shell rock pads along the tree line and a loop that would go near a barn/pavilion area. I guess they finally found some money!!

Sorry to hear about the reservation issues as I know that keeping the state forests simple and easy to use was one of my favorite parts (you don't have any hand holding but it is also inexpensive and easy to get access to quiet places to enjoy)... I know that the head recreation guy in Tallahassee who arrived a few years before I left seemed to think that we needed to be more like state/national parks. I think it's a shame as I agreed more with the longtime rec. guy that he replaced. He had a slogan for recreation on state forests, "Space, Solitude, and Self-reliance" and I thought it was perfect. Everything changes I guess.

If mother nature did a lot of pruning then expect some hot fires. We had stuff burn HOT that normally wouldn't burn at all after the hurricanes in 2004. Fire backing happily through oak leaf litter. It was mostly (I think) due to sunlight reaching all the way through due to the hurricanes stripping so much stuff out of the trees. It makes for good restoration burns (getting fire back into difficult areas that have had fire excluded for decades) but also hot fires that are difficult to control and can potentially burn up bigger standing trees than you might want to kill. It should be interesting.

Enjoy the rest of the season... I'm planning a trip to the WA coast but don't know yet what the hammock options may or may not be. Sadly I don't have anywhere out my back yard to go let my hair down (I live in wheat/barley/lentil country). I will have some time this summer to hunt for some regional spots though.

Hello samsara. Good to hear from you. You are missed but normally end up in the campfire conversations. Quite some changes since you left. The overflow parking area is now a 10 site campground four which are shell pads for RV's with a large pavilion. Primarily for hunters. They have also turned reservations over to Reserve America which sucks. Now a weekend hike and hang at two sites requires two separate reservations with two reservation fees one per site. Only 5 people and 2 vehicles per reservation. But Jeanne and Cody both implied that we were special since you had set us up down there. Mother Nature did a good job of pruning with Irma which was probably overdue. Plenty of firewood to clean up.It would be great to see you again around the campfire.

Love that Arbuckle area too! Miss seeing ya around samsara! Good to see you are checking up on us from time to time! Let us know when you are coming back down to visit when you need to thaw out!!!