It’s here! Four years and thousands of miles of driving and hiking later, I’m pleased to announce that my newest book, Exploring Florida’s Botanical Wonders (University Press of Florida) is hot off the press and will start shipping by October 1.

It’s not your typical travel guide, and it’s not a hiking guide. Inside, I provide narrative about the botanical beauty of specific parts of our state, and guidebook information on where to go and what to see of botanical interest throughout Florida, from formal gardens and botanical gardens to wild places with pitcher plant prairies, mangrove forests, and extraordinary orchids.  Color photos give you a preview of what you’ll see when you travel to experience these places.

As a companion to the book, I’ve kicked off a new website, Botanical Florida. There isn’t much up on it yet, but it’s where I’ll be sharing information on best times to see specific wildflowers in bloom, maps on how to find the locations described in the book, and the many, many photos (too many to fit in this book, for certain!) that I took in the wild and at public and botanical gardens throughout the state of Florida while I researched this book.  I’ll be sharing video, too!

Right now, if you go to the website, you can save with a pre-order form to order this book for $20 direct from the publisher.

If you’re a Florida Trail Association member, you’ll want to get in on the annual photo contest. It was announced in the last Footprint, but since I don’t see the rules posted on the FTA website, I’m sharing them here. There’s not much time left! The contest closes on Feb 27. It’s for bragging rights, of course, and since this is the first year in five years that I’ve not been running the contest, I can finally enter it again.

There are three categories: Good Nature, Share the Joy, and Footprint covers. You can submit up to three photos total, you pick which categories to put them in. Photos must be from the Florida Trail or FTA activities or somehow related to the Florida Trail.  See the attached document for all of the rules and details. Winners will be announced at the Annual Conference. Enter soon!

2009-photo-contest-rules

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of a more robust Florida Hikes forum since August, but wasn’t sure which of many different software and services to choose from. I was in the middle of testing a bunch of them in December again. While I was out backpacking last week and realized I wanted to share my photos with the folks who were with me on the trip, I thought … it’s about time. Let’s get this started.  Heck with all this testing. So… here we go!

MyFloridaHikes.com is the new and improved version of the Florida Hikes forum, where you can upload your photos, make photo albums from your own photos and your friends, connect with friends, post videos, post activities under the events section, and even write your own blog posts. Best of all, it’s integrated with FaceBook and MySpace (Im looking into Twitter integration) to let you post stuff in the community and then share it with your other peeps. Pretty slick!

You can get to the new My Florida Hikes community either through the Forum section of the website OR by going directly to http://myfloridahikes.com. Set up your profile, post some stuff, share your trips with us!

Over at The Florida Hiker, there’s a great blog post right now on learning to wield a chainsaw for the sake of trail maintenance. The Florida Trail Association offers these free workshops to their members several times a year, and if you want to go out and work with a trail crew on the FT, you need to be certified in chainsaw use. Check out what goes on in the workshop …

Meanwhile, I’ve added this site to the blogroll as another fine example of blogging on Florida hiking!

I added this blog feed (to be accompanied by my own personal asides on hiking) to Twitter yesterday. Keep up and comment at http://twitter.com/floridahikes.  You can follow my own rambles on a variety of topics, including hiking, at http://twitter.com/sandrafriend. Now get out there and enjoy this cool weather, perfect for Florida hiking!