Thursday, December 2, 2010 (Salt Springs, FL)

Holy Cats it’s cold! It’s only 37 degrees out there! That’s only like 4 degrees Celsius. Hey...I thought we were in Florida, for heaven’s sake! A cold front has moved in for the last couple of days—I wonder how long it is planning on staying! One nice thing, though, is that the skies are clear blue and sunny...so that’s nice.

We found the trailhead we were looking for on highway 316 and pulled in. The parking area is well thought out, giving riders plenty of room to park their vehicles and unload their ATV’s. There are also nice restrooms...they are pit toilets but are clean and housed in a nice cement building.

It was 10:30 as we headed out on the trails...we were early today. Steve had been unable to get his GPS to track our route yesterday, but after much fiddling around with it last night, today he got it working. The trails are well marked but it is still nice to have that reassurance that you are going to get back from where you started.

We started out on the brown trail, went over to the blue trail, did a tiny bit of the red and looped back around on the blue and brown. There were a lot of deer and bear tracks on the trail today. We both really enjoyed these trails better than yesterday’s. They were narrower and windier...not at all difficult...no steep hill climbs...actually, no hill climbs period—steep or not. But we had a great time! It was chilly, though. Who would have thought that I’d be wearing 4 layers of clothing in Florida?! I even had to put on my rain coat to act as a wind-break...and at one point, I wish I had my long-johns on!!

We arrived back at the trailhead and the truck at 3:00...that had been a fast, fun day! As usual, we gassed up the quads before loading them back in the truck. Once we got everything put away, we headed home.

We sat outside (yes, it was chilly) with a drink and talked about our next stop before we have to be in Orlando (a week this Tuesday). We may check out the trails in the southern part of the Ocala National Forest. Decisions....decisions...