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tucker0104
10-11-2008, 22:48
Does anyone know of a weekends worth of hiking (15-25 miles) within 3 hours of Jacksonville?

take-a-knee
10-11-2008, 23:08
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.

tucker0104
10-11-2008, 23:10
I did the Pine Mountain Trail last year about this time. It was gorgeous.

floridahikes
10-12-2008, 07:46
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

floridahikes
10-12-2008, 07:51
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

wahoo
10-12-2008, 11:32
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.

tucker0104
10-12-2008, 13:41
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.

JaxHiker
11-13-2008, 15:29
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/).