Just a quick note for subscribers that the following Hike-A-Week sheets are now available for download in the Hike-A-Week archives. I’ve finally caught up to them this week:

Florida’s Panhandle
Phipps Park
Leon Sinks

North Florida
Poe Springs Park

Central Florida
Catfish Creek Preserve State Park
Enchanted Forest Sanctuary
Florida Trail, Baseline Road to Marshall Swamp
Florida Trail, Lake Delancy to The 88 Store
Florida Trail, Land Bridge to Santos
Florida Trail, Pruitt to Ross Prairie
Florida Trail, Ross Prairie to SW 49th Ave
Florida Trail, SW 49th Ave to Land Bridge
Florida Trail, Santos to Baseline
(Includes the entire Florida Trail on the Cross Florida Greenway. Dedicated page to appear soon!)

South Florida
Indiro Savannahs Natural Area

As always, new subscribers can access the entire archive of Hike-A-Week as well. Each is its own virtual guidebook chapter with detailed information about the hike.

Thanks to Florida Trail Days plus five straight days of hiking to try and wrap the second edition of 50 Hikes in Central Florida, plus jury duty starting in a few minutes, I’m behind on last week’s Hike A Week. Look for two in your inbox this week: Phipps Park and a new surprise delight, Catfish Crrek State Park. Here’s a peek from that hike!

I’m in the midst of reorganizing how Florida Hikes subscribers can access GPX and KML file downloads. The first of five pages is now up and ready for use, providing file downloads arranged by city and grouped logically. If you’re a subscriber, log in and follow the new menu option on your right hand menu for Central Florida, or go directly to http;//www.floridahikes.com/gps-central-florida to try it out.

Jump in and look for whatever trail or destination you need to on FloridaHikes.com, and now you’ll find it! The default search was kind of wonky, so I finally replaced it with a custom Google search that not only searches all 1,000+ pages of the main site but grabs content from My Florida Hikes and this blog as well. When you’re looking for a trail, you’ll find it now! Thanks to all those who provided suggestions. I’ll be installing it on this blog and MyFloridaHikes.com as well.

Now that it’s hiking season again, I’m getting a flurry of inquiries about logistics for backpacking the Ocala National Forest. It’s the top destination for backpackers in Florida due to 70 unbroken miles of the Florida Trail leading from Clearwater Lake to Buckman Lock, well-marked, well-maintained, and dating back to the late 1960s, so the footpath is pretty obvious.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be adding all of the Florida Trail segments on the eastern side of the Ocala National Forest to the Florida Hikes! website, with many of them featured in-depth as the Hike-A-Week for subscribers.  In the meantime, to start the series, I’ve added a new page on the website to assist all backpackers planning their journey on this popular section of the Florida Trail:

Backpacking the Ocala National Forest