Hiking the Florida Panhandle


Menu

It's not an adventure until somebody screws up...

Overnight Trip to Torreya

My daughter and I went on a little backpacking trip this weekend. I took her to Torreya State Park, and we camped on a bluff overlooking the river.

We left the house yesterday around noon, got to the park about one and hit the trail. The sky was leaden, but the forecast alleged that it would be clearing up in the afternoon. It didn't. We had about five minutes of sun the whole day. (Global warming indeed.) I knew that it was supposed to get very cold, and I was worried that we would have a miserable time. The cloud cover actually kept it from getting too cold, though.

We only had to hike a couple of miles to get to the campsite. The trail took us through wiregrass pine flats and a rather unique area with red sandstone cliffs before ending up in the hardwood forests along the river. Here are a few pics of the trip...

Here's my happy camper standing on a cliff that overlooks a small ravine.

Here she is standing in front of a cliff face (not the same cliff). Note that she has a tiger in her tank. She insisted on bringing him along. :)

And one of me, just in case you guys have forgotten what I look like...

When we got to the campsite, we walked down to take a look at the river. I was fussing at my daughter to keep away from the edge of the bluff, and she decided that I needed to get a picture of her "falling" off the cliff...

What a card.

The bedrock is limestone near the river, and you can see the rock ledges in places along the banks...

That's a houseboat off in the background.

This is looking the other way...

At the bottom right you can see the point we were standing on. To the left is an inlet where a little creek flows down from the hills above. Straight ahead, the Apalachicola flows to the sea. Up above, nothing but clouds.

The clouds finally disappeared sometime during the night. We woke up in the wee hours of the morning and had a bright moon shining down on us. When the sun got up the next day, it warmed up pretty nice. We had breakfast, did a little exploring near the campsite, and then broke down camp and hiked out. I wish I had some good pictures from this morning, but the batteries died on us. It was a fun little excursion. my daughter's first backpacking trip, and she did great! :)


Visit My Florida Hikes

[Home] [Back to Top]