Florida Trail Wilderness Areas

[troutfisher!]

I have a personal challenge for 2018 to Visit a different wilderness area each month of the year. I spend March and April in the Tampa area and have day-hiked the Green Swamp Wilderness the past two years.

In researching Florida Wilderness areas, Billies Bay Wilderness, Alexander Springs Wilderness, and Juniper Prairie Wilderness.

Can anyone provide information on hiking in these areas? Trail conditions, good routes, etc would be great.

Does the Florida Trail go through any of these Wilderness areas or just skirt by? As an option to hiking, perhaps I will need to rent a canoe to actually "visit" the Wilderness area.

[Seawoods]

Here is what I know. The Florida Trail does not go through the Billies Bay Wilderness or the Alexander Springs Wilderness but does go through the Juniper Prairie Wilderness. The US park service has developed campgrounds at Alexander Springs and at Juniper. You can rent a kayak or canoe at Juniper and do the Juniper Creek run which is narrow and interesting, but it takes a while if you are not familiar with paddling. I am pretty sure you can also rent canoes /kayaks at the Alexander Springs, although I have not done it myself as I had my own canoe for that outing. There is a ramp/landing down a forest service road along the edge of the Alexander Wilderness Area and the run gets narrower as you go east toward the St. John's river. I am not sure if there is any shuttle service for Alexander Creek as there is for Juniper. The hike from Clearwater Lake to Alexander I thought was a nice hike, but north of Alexander toward Juniper there are more logged areas and the Big Scrub starts to be a dominant theme. I have not hiked much of the trail between Juniper and Salt Springs, so I can't advise you in that area. If you look up www.FloridaHikes.com there is a detailed description of the segments of the Florida Trail in the Ocala.

[troutfisher!]

Thanks Seawoods for the FloridaHikes.com link. Great info and maps there. I am planning on hiking Juniper Prairie Wilderness in March.