Escape From Fever Cabin!

Yesterday a couple of fellows and I explored some woods that are an extension of San Felasco Hammock. I had come prepared for a trek around the property to look at its sinkholes and hammock slopes, printing out 2ft topo and aerial photos. My friends just wanted to wander around at random, however, so we missed seeing a lot of the tract’s karst features. I will return.

The topography here, like that of the state park, is transitional between impermeable highlands and limestone depressions, having remnant highland ridges and flat-topped hills (mini-peneplains? tepuis?). The latter drain via seepage slopes and stormwater runoff treatment ponds discharging through first and second order streams into the sinks. The forests on site are highly disturbed. Remnant longleaf pine sandhills are overgrown with laurel oak, loblolly pine and greenbriar. Some of those old longleafs have catfaces where turpentiners gathered pine sap. This one is particularly large:


When we started out for the day, ice in the cattle trough was three-eighths of an inch thick. I felt sorry for the robins that couldn’t get a drink, so I broke the ice for them. It wasn’t too unsurprising, therefore, to find a second-order stream in the woods that was frozen over wherever the sun didn’t shine:



I need a break from San Felasco. I think I’ll go back to the Goethe Tract next weekend in an area that I have not had an opportunity yet to explore.