Hiking to the Big Cypress and Buck Island Pond

Monday, January 29, 2024

Hi Blog!

We're still in Cedar Key. We have a couple more days before we move north. Another cold front moved through on Sunday bringing wind and rain. We had a day of baking bread, making gumbo and watching footballs games. The bread and gumbo turned out great, but the football teams we rooted for both lost!

With the threat of rain past, we decided to get out and explore a couple more trails in the Goethe State Forest. First on the list was Big Cypress Boardwalk.

The first part of the trail passed through a pine flatwood. Several trees were highlighted with wooden explanatory signs.

The Southern Magnolia is one of the most beautiful evergreen trees, having a straight trunk, conical crown, and very fragrant, very large, white flowers. Unfortunately, it is a little early in the season to see those amazing flowers.

The pine trees here are so tall its hard to tell if any one of them is a slash pine, loblolly or long leaf pine.

The boardwalk starts at the end of the nature trail as we transitioned from the pine flatwoods to the floodplain swamp.

At the end of the boardwalk stands a 900 year old cypress tree known as the Goethe Giant Bald Cypress. This tree is over 105 feet tall and 29 feet around. Kathy had to lean way back to see the top.

During the 1800’s and early 1900’s, many of these giant cypress trees were cut down during the logging booms because this type of wood is so valuable for its durability. The Florida wilderness was once covered with these old trees, many dating back thousands of years. The trees in this area only survived the woodman's ax because they were hollow inside.

As we looked out into the floodplain swamp, we could see at least two other giant bald cypress. We also saw several old stumps from once mighty trees. If this forest is managed correctly, in another 900 years there will be hundreds of giant bald cypress.  We'll be back then to check.

Before long, we were back in the Jeep and heading over to our next trailhead. The Buck Island Pond Hiking Trail is a two mile trail just down the road from the Goethe State Forest Headquarters. The trail loops around a cypress-lined pond in the middle of a pine flatwood. We started our hike by following the boardwalk out to an observation deck on the pond.

The boardwalk was added to the hike to make it easy for birders to simply sit along the pond’s edge and scan avian activity. At this time of year, we did not spot very many birds.

As we left the boardwalk and began to make our way around the loop trail, we heard an owl hooting in the trees close to the lake. We tried to spot him, but as we got closer, the owl stopped hooting. He was no fool.  

 

We did spot this really cute flower on a lily pad.

The trail was wide enough for us to walk side by side. The sandy soil was covered with pine needles, which usually makes for a pleasant hiking surface. However, we kept tripping and turning our ankles on cypress knees. After several hundred yards of tip-toeing through the cypress knees, we came upon this warning sign. They seriously need to move this sign closer to the trailhead!

We picked up a trail guide at the trailhead. There were supposed to be lettered stops around the pond. We found a few of the posts, like the one for the slash pine plantation, but we never saw the wood duck box or Gopher Tortoises.

With spring still weeks away, its always fun to spot those early flowers.

Saw Palmetto and Longleaf Pine dominated the second half of the hike.

We spotted a couple of hanging gardens:

Stop H promised pitcher plants and a transition zone. We found an old boardwalk through a very dry pine flatwood. At one point, this might have been wet enough for pitcher plants, but no longer.

It's not often you see tree fungus growing right in the middle of the trail. It's all that is left of the tree that fell nearby.

The trail guide indicated that we would be able to see Red Cockaded Woodpeckers. In this case, the guide was correct:

Here's a closer look.

We finished our hike with lunch in the picnic area at the trailhead. We thought about stopping at another trailhead and sampling another trail in the Goethe State Forest, but decided to head back to camp and bust out the smoker. Kathy had picked up some local fish and decided to brine and smoke some mullet. 

Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it turns out!