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Hiking through the scrub on the Jenkins Trail

Starting at a small trailhead off a side road off Wakeford Rd, the Jenkins Trail leads you to a cool tannic stream slicing through the desert-like scrub of the Lake Wales Ridge: Tiger Creek, for which this preserve managed by The Nature Conservancy is named. This is the northernmost trail in the preserve.

From the parking area, follow the bark chip footpath to the fence line, walk through the gap, and turn right. Orange blazes lead you down a jeep road through scrubby flatwoods. At the T with another jeep road, turn right. Stretches of white sand lie beneath tall longleaf pines. After 0.2 mile, you reach a junction of jeep paths. Stay to the right and follow the orange blazes. A denser forest in the distance gives you a clue as to where Tiger Creek is located.

After walking through the scrub, at 0.4 mile you enter a hammock and another junction of jeep trails. The hiking trail leaves its “roadbed” route and heads down to the left through the hammock towards Tiger Creek. Watch your step: the footing is uneven. Vegetation forms a hedge between you and the creek until 0.5 mile, where you can step to the edge and look at the clear blackwater sand bottomed creek and its floodplain marshes, busy with spatterdock and resounding with the calls of frogs and alligators.

The trail plows through mounds of muscadine grape vines, tall pokeberry, and seasonally wet spots. There are lots of roots underfoot, and tall saw palmetto and cinnamon ferns as its winds along the creek. After 0.6 mile, you can duck under young cabbage palms for a look at a bend in the creek. The trail continues through the hammock and reaches a curve in the creek, a real beauty spot at 0.7 mile. Where you reach a fern-filled floodplain, the footpath rises back up onto a levee and departs Creek, quickly rising into the dry open scrub where you might see tarflowers in bloom. Blazes point the way.