Does anyone know of a weekends worth of hiking (15-25 miles) within 3 hours of Jacksonville?

Does anyone know of a weekends worth of hiking (15-25 miles) within 3 hours of Jacksonville?

Pine Mountain Trail would be the closest, 4+hrs ( N of Columbus GA). The Chattooga River portion of the Foothills trail would be about the same distance.

I did the Pine Mountain Trail last year about this time. It was gorgeous.

Actually, the closest would be the Florida Trail in the Osceola National Forest. Might be an hour, hour and a half from you. http://www.floridatrail.org/Trails/northflorida/Osceola.html

And within 3 hours, you have the whole Ocala National Forest as your playground. 100+ miles of backpacking available.
http://www.floridatrail.org/Hikes/northflorida/OcalaN.html
http://www.floridatrail.org/Hikes/northflorida/OcalaS.html
http://www.floridatrail.org/Hikes/centralflorida/CFGEast.html

Heck, in a three hour radius, you have dozens of places for a weekend hike! Lots of segments of the Florida Trail within that zone, and you can even get down here to my neck of the woods for the 43-mile loop at the Citrus Tract of Withlacoochee State Forest. http://www.floridahikes.com/ft/citrus

Cheers, Navigator

I'd go to Ocala for a more scenic hike, but Citrus has some elevation (well, a couple of hills here and there) that will give you a good workout. I run out at the Citrus "A" Loop about twice a month.

Three hours will take you to a lot of great places on the FT. The way gas prices are, if you are doing just a weekend hike, I'd hike around the Osceola National Forest.

I am trying to wait for it to cool down some in florida to kill off the mosquitos. I am not a big fan of them buzzing my ear.

Not sure why I didn't respond to this earlier. I'll second floridahikes on Osceola. My buddy and I did Olustee to Deep Creek last month. It came out to 25.1 miles. I wrote it up at my blog (http://www.idratherbehiking.com/).