FT2018 Day 11: Buckhead Ridge Campsite (mile 149.6) to Yates Marsh South (mile 167.2)

8.1 FT miles, 15.0 miles roadwalk detour

I got up before dawn and started walking the dike.  I stopped off at a local park to refill my water supply, passed the normal turn for the trail (closed for construction), and continued down the dike to the town of Okeechobee. It was another foggy morning.

Morning on the dike.

Lake Okeechobee. 

I reached town, and headed for the McDonald's for breakfast,  internet, and to charge my electronics.

McDonald's was hopping. It was like it was the town’s local diner, where groups of people regularly met for breakfast together. Everyone seemed to know each other, and even seemed to know the approximate time that others would come in.

Of course,  I had entire groups of people stare at me when I walked in. Someone asked where I was going, and I loudly explained about the Florida Trail. When I got to the register, one of the workers had a lot of questions for me.

Eventually, I got my breakfast, and started charging electronics and uploading my journal entries. That is when Woodchuck walked in. I was surprised to see her there as I got up early, and she is not an early riser. It turns out that she got a ride into town.

We sat and charged our electronics for a long time. Finally,  by 10:30am, I couldn't wait any longer and left with partially charged electronics.  It was already later than I had wanted to leave. I had made a mistake when estimating the distances of the road walk. I was going to do at least 5 more miles today than I had originally planned.

Woodchuck was thinking of spending the night in town after finishing her resupply, so we parted ways. I headed to the Publix grocery store down the road.

Surprisingly, as soon as I entered I had someone recognized me as a backpacker. He seemed to know there was a trail nearby but didn't know much about the whole Florida Trail itself and had a ton of questions.

The rest of the people in the store had different reactions.  Some of the older generation gave me some “looks” and would passive-aggressively mutter comments. You know, the kind that are just loud enough for you to pick up a couple words. I heard one person grumble, “Only in America these days.” I assume it was in reference to what they perceived as a lady vagrant buying candy with a credit card.

Next to Publix was a Sprint store where I bought some replacement headphones. Neither of the 2 men working  there had heard of the Florida Trail and I seemingly blew one of their minds. He had a lot of questions for me and seemed really concerned that I didn't carry a gun or knife for protection. He even offered to give me a knife to take with me. I declined as politely as I could.

Now that I was done with my town chores, I headed up towards SR 70. Technically, I was on the official construction detour. Thankfully, the very busy highway had a sidewalk, at least a portion of the way.  However, I was still in danger of the impatient people pulling out of driveways.

As I  got out of town, the sidewalk ended and I had to walk the shoulder for about 6 more miles. The traffic was less than what it was in town, but there was still quite a bit of traffic and it moved very fast. It was incredibly stressful. I walked the side of oncoming traffic, so I could keep an eye on oncoming drifters.  My hat got blown off by trucks a couple times.

My feet were killing me. I had stopped at a park in town to let the swelling go down, but I had been walking hard pavement all day, including on the dike, and the swelling was very painful. The heat and humidity did not help things.

Park in Ocheechbee.

There were really no good places to stop along this route, so I sat down in the shade of a utility pole and took off my shoes. My feet were so swollen that they hurt even worse when I first took them out of my shoes and exposed them to air. I let the swelling come down a little before continuing down the highway.

I started getting a lot of people stopping to offer me a ride. I had truck pull into a driveway and wait for me. It turned out to be Woodchuck and the ride she had managed to get from town. They did their best to convince me to break my continuous steps on the trail and ride with them. By this time I had already done the majority of the detour, so I waved them off.

Eventually, I limped across the junction of SR 70 to the blazes of the Florida Trail. In this section, the Florida Trail was another road walk, but on a less busy road. However, there were still plenty of cars coming at high speeds. I found the best place I could to sit down and take my shoes off again. I had taken plenty of anti inflammatories but my feet were still problematic.

Florida Trail roadwalk.

Vlog 

I limped down the road some more, watching the sun start to go down. I wouldn't make it to my campsite until after dark. I was also running a little low on water. I filtered some from the ditches on the side of the road, but that water was brown, despite the filtering. I didn't filter much and decided that it would be for emergencies only.

Towards the end of the day, I had several people offer me rides again. One man and his son had seen me on 70 earlier as well as Woodchuck on this road and he wanted to chat my ears off. By this time the sun was almost set. The younger man realized this and made several attempts to let me get on my way. These guys gave me the best thing I could have hoped for: two bottles of water. No resorting to brown water!

By the time the men left me, I had lost most of my light. By the time I got to the gate for Yates Mash it was completely dark. I had a little trouble navigating in the dark. It looked like there were a lot of false/game trails in addition to the trail I was taking. Also, the blazes are not reflective. I had my app with GPS out consistently to navigate, eventually making my way to Yates Marsh South campground where two other tents were already set up and the people seemingly at bed for the night.

I set my tent up in the dark, then laid in bed to go to sleep without eating dinner. It was just one of those days. My feet were still hurting enough that, despite how tired I was, going to sleep was difficult.