FTOC stands for Florida Trail Ocala Challenge. Itchyfeet2wander and
poosu enjoy hiking and hope that there are other cachers out there
who share the interest. Not a real challenge type cache, the hope
is that this series will result in a nice string of caches on the
Florida Trail as it traverses Ocala National Forest. To help with
this we hope to identify the access points where a standard 2wd car
can reach the trail for a nice day hike in the 3 to 7 mile range.
To this end we have developed a cache naming system that may
assist. All the cache names will have the format: FTOC ANNNB. A is
a letter, either P or T. P means it is a place to park where a road
that is reachable by car crosses the trail. T means it is a cache
on the trail. NNN is the number of the cache which will start with
000 at the southern end of the ONF near Paisley. The final letter,
B indicates that all the caches with the same letter were placed on
the same day. In other words, all the A series are in a nice one
day hike. All the B series are in another nice one day hike etc.
(When we did these hikes we placed a car at both ends of the trail
and were able to hike to the second car, making it a one way
route…not a loop trail.)
For location purposes we assume the trail is running north/south.
We will tell you if a cache is on the east or west side. If the
particular section of trail you are on is not N/S then you have to
use the general direction you are headed to figure out which side
is east or west.
Our future caches will be no more than a mile apart and we'll skip
numbers. Here’s where the challenge comes in. We are hoping
there are some hiking cachers out there who will place caches in
the gaps and maybe use the naming system so you can look on a
geocaching map and see the path of the Florida Scenic Trail.
After several hikes we found that Turtletoes and Biggie have
placed quite a few caches on the trail, usually at road access
points. Their series is called Trail of Bites and is usually
followed by a cache specific name. They tend to be more challenging
to find than FTOC caches, but they do help to populate the
trail.
Here is a summary of the hikes to date and a comment as to whether
roads would allow a single hiker a relatively short ride back on a
bicycle.
A series: 7 miles, good bicycle road access
B series: 5 miles, good bicycle road access
C series: 3 miles, no bicycle road access
No vehicles, even bicycles are allowed on the Florida Trail so if
you plan to use a bike it must be left at one end and ridden back
to your car on an adjacent road.
Look for what seems to be an enormous pile of kindling, it's not
where the cache is but it's close. This one is on the west side of
the FT as you are heading north.