Apparently, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray." Which basically means, even with good planning, sometimes things go wrong.
I kept following the two track waiting for the side trail that was going to take me back to the main trail. I never found it! I only saw three side trails the entire time I was hiking. One went to the right, which is so NOT where I wanted to go. The other one was barely marked which is why I discounted is at the trail I wanted. The last one had downed trees in the way, although there was a tree off the main trail with a Red Dot on it. I thought maybe this was the Florida Trail, but there was no sign indicating such and I could not see any other trees that were marked to let me think that was it. So I continued on....
After a while, I started thinking that I had missed something. So I turned on my phone to try and pull up a different map. Turns out that there was two places that would have probably led me back the way I wanted to go to make the mini-loop I was trying to do. But, I continued on thinking the main trail was still going to loop the way I wanted. The hard packed two-track seemed like such a better option that trying to navigate the stroller over debris. It wasn't until I hit one of my stages for my CLUE series that I realized how far I had actually come! So I made a quick phone call to my phone a friend to see if maybe he would come save us from the long hike back. Turns out I was about smack-dab in the middle of the trail from either parking lot. It looked to be about a 1.5 or so mile in either direction. So I figured that I would pay for my poor map reading skills by walking back to my car the way I had come.
I told FinsUpPalmCove that I wouldn't place any new caches while I was hiking today, but sometimes you just have to place one to commerate the adventure. I had seen this neat tree while I was traveling north. There was a cool lizard hanging out by it and a GI-Normous spider there too, which is why I didn't place one on the way in. But on the way out, the lizard was still there (the big spider too!), and I really wanted to leave a little something behind to share my story. So a couple of quick photos, one of the cool tree and one of the cool lizard, and we were on our way.
There wasn't nearly as much interesting stuff to photograph on the way back out. I think I was just too tired by then. Hiking in Florida from the hours of 1-4 at the end of summer was probably not the best of plans. But we had plenty of water, lots of snacks, extra batteries, so at least we came prepared. We just weren't prepared for the extra milage we did today! By the time we got back to the car, we hit 6.1 miles. I got some really great photos today too.
It wasn't until about 6 o'clock when I was downloading my photos when I realized that geo-hostage #1 had an ortho appointment at 3:00 today! But that's okay. I'd still rather hike 6.1 miles in the hot Florida sun than sit at a Dentist's office anytime!
Maybe next time, one of my geo-friends will be along for the adventure! Have fun out there. Enjoy the sights and sounds along the way. I look forward to hearing about your adventure!