Four Days on the Florida Adventure Trail with My Daughter

Location: Florida Adventure Trail, Osceola National Forest to Ocala National Forest, Florida

For years, every state in the South had an adventure trail except Florida. My buddy Jon Birkmire spent about six years fixing that, and before he opened the Florida Adventure Trail to the public, he took a few of us out to ride it. On June 30, 2022, my daughter Gwendolyn and I loaded up the Rover for a four-day daddy-daughter expedition on what everybody calls the FAT.

She was four going on fourteen. It was the Fourth of July weekend in Florida. And the horseflies had opinions about both of us.

Packing the Rover

We’d be off grid for four days, so the Rover was loaded with a camp toilet, water, food, drinks and all my cooking gear. My tools and medical kit always live in the Rover anyway. We slept inside it on two camp pads that fit back there perfectly, and I brought a pop-up tent that turned out to be way more than we needed. Most important item on board: marshmallows.

Day one: Osceola National Forest and the horseflies

We started in Osceola National Forest and met up with the Overlanderoos right away. At the first campsite we stopped at, the horseflies were so bad we decided not to stay. There were literally hundreds of them flying around. We weighed our options (Big Camp or Hog Pen Landing), packed up and moved on.

We rolled into Big Camp in Osceola National Forest losing daylight, so that’s where we set up, bugs or no bugs. The professional overlanders among us were briefly defeated by a garbage Amazon camp table. I’m just reporting what I saw.

The next morning I can tell you that Big Camp is a beautiful spot, with a bunch of little nooks tucked into the foliage for your camp. It’s also basically a swamp, and in July there’s an extraordinary amount of bugs. The horseflies were the size of Cessnas, and they sounded like them too. Then this guy showed up. Somebody in camp summed him up perfectly: “I’m looking, and I don’t like him.”

Gwendolyn didn’t sleep great either. She did acrobatics all night, and one of them landed somewhere I won’t describe on a family blog. My verdict on Big Camp: go in the winter. It’s a great spot once the heat and the bugs back off.

Meeting the godfather of the FAT

On day two we met up with Jon, the man who put the whole trail together. He spent about six years linking tracks into one route, and we were grateful to see it before anyone else. Here’s how he described it: 1,200 miles of mapped trail, more than 150 campsites, and tons of points of interest, from historical markers to cool things to see to restaurants worth stopping at. And gas stations. You need those.

One of the loops he showed us winds way back into the swamp. You don’t need a swamp buggy, but mud-terrain tires are advisable-ish, because back in there it gets gnarly and the mossy soup will suck you down. The rule for the mud is the same as always: momentum, momentum, momentum.

The first official water crossing

Then we hit the first official water crossing on the FAT. It’s long, and Jon assured us we’d all make it. One of the trucks found a deep hole halfway through, and the water came up past the headlights. From the back seat, Gwendolyn’s only question was “Why is it yellow, Dad?”

By 4:30 that afternoon we were still trying to make Hopkins Prairie in Ocala National Forest. It was the Friday of a holiday weekend, we’d picked up Dennis (seven rigs now), and we’d have been on the road until after 10 p.m. The kids had done a wonderful job all day, so we called it, fueled up, and camped closer. Most of the crew ate gas station barbecue, which apparently was pretty good. Gwendolyn found a blue Gatorade, so she was set. Thanks, Dennis.

Hopkins Prairie, all to ourselves

Day three took us toward Rodman Dam, a stretch that’s about 60% pavement and 40% dirt. It was dry, so it was a little less epic than normal, but it’s a scenic run. Then we rolled out onto Hopkins Prairie in Ocala National Forest.

We thought the storm had passed us by. It hadn’t. A second cell came through and it rained steadily for a while. In the middle of all that, Gwendolyn gave Jon a Guardian coin. We’d practiced her line: it was for being such a good steward of our lands. He loved it.

Here’s the surprise: there was nobody on the prairie. On the Fourth of July weekend! The last time I was there it was so busy I swore I wouldn’t come back. So we stayed. After a few days of chasing daylight, it was really nice to roll into camp with two and a half hours of sun left and just hang out.

Day four and the ride home

Day four, long story short: I made breakfast, we slept like crap, and we packed up. Even at 72 degrees with low humidity, a fan hanging in the Rover and the moonroof open, I could not get it to cool down. We drove the sand roads along Hopkins Prairie, a nice, slow, meandering drive with some fairly deep sand that any standard four-wheel drive can handle. Then everyone split up for the long drive home.

We probably only made it through a fifth of the Florida Adventure Trail, partly because we stopped to film so much. Without the camera, you could get from Osceola to Hopkins Prairie in a day. It took us three. Gwendolyn was begging for another day in Ocala and couldn’t understand why everyone was going home. That’s how I knew it was a good trip.

CONCLUSION

Florida finally has its adventure trail, and it’s the real deal: swamp loops, deep water, sugar sand and miles of pine forest you’d never guess were there. Our four days covered about a fifth of it, and Gwendolyn would’ve happily kept going. If you want to run it, grab the GPX from Sunshine State Adventure Co., go in the cooler months, keep your momentum in the mud and plan the days around whoever’s riding shotgun. Watch the whole trip in the video above, and if you like Hopkins Prairie, here’s my Rally Point run there from 2019.