[ad_1]
1.9K
It’s ten weeks till the Tallahassee Marathon and so I’ve been hitting the paths…on my bike. For the previous two years, my husband has run our metropolis’s half marathon—a race that begins on the capitol constructing and wraps round Lake Ella, then Cascades, then Doak, earlier than it dumps runners in School City. This 12 months, he’s leveling as much as a full marathon, an enterprise that signifies that most of his Saturdays are spent operating as much as fifteen miles.
Earlier than my husband grew to become a runner, we’d spend our weekends strolling. With our long-haired dachshund main the way in which, we’d stroll beneath the oaks festooned in Spanish moss at Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park or make our manner south of city to meander previous the moist and dry sinks that dot the Leon Sinks Geological Space mountaineering path. When his new operating ritual successfully eradicated our strolling ritual and we nonetheless needed to spend time collectively exterior, he got here up with Bike and Run days: he runs, I bike alongside him.
![Dog walking by the Saint Marks Lighthouse](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_5484-small-1024x768.jpg)
![Dog walking by the Saint Marks Lighthouse](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_5484-small-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_4264-small-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_4264-small-1024x768.jpg)
We’ve tried our Bike and Runs at many various locations on the town. In and round Tallahassee there are various trails which might be lengthy sufficient to assist long-distance treks together with the St. Marks Historic Path, Miccosukee Greenway, or Outdated Centerville Street—an orange clay cover highway that meanders previous northern Florida’s piney plantations and is widespread with long-distance runners. We’ve discovered although, that the place that works finest for us is St. Mark’s Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, the place paths stretch deep into wilderness, previous freshwater ponds, saltwater flats, and pine forests.
![Jogging at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0405-cropped-1024x741.jpg)
![Jogging at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0405-cropped-1024x741.jpg)
Leaving Lighthouse Street, and Deeper into the St. Marks Refuge
Earlier than beginning our Bike and Runs, my husband and I frequented St. Marks. I’m a birder and so we’d drive down the refuge’s asphalt highway, stopping ceaselessly for brief walks across the Mounds Swimming pools or alongside the gulf seashores abutting the lighthouse—our canine desperately making an attempt to chew the fiddler crabs that swarm the shore at low tide. We’d see otters dipping out and in of the creeks that run alongside the East River Pool and we’d watch boats pace by as we stood at historic Port Leon, searching throughout the St. Mark’s River. However there’s solely to this point you’ll be able to go on foot, and so, our walks wouldn’t take us all that removed from the highway itself. One of many issues that I discover thrilling concerning the Bike and Runs is our capacity to go deep into the refuge, on trails that we hardly ever see different folks, the place it appears like we’ve got escaped right into a wilder, extra mystical a part of Florida.
![White pelicans surrounded by egrets and several dozen migratory ducks in Mounds Pool 3 of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_4857-small-1024x683.jpg)
![White pelicans surrounded by egrets and several dozen migratory ducks in Mounds Pool 3 of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_4857-small-1024x683.jpg)
Now, as the autumn transitions into winter, is without doubt one of the finest occasions to go deep into the refuge. The temperature has began to chill off (though I nonetheless suggest getting an early begin because it feels hotter on the market with the dearth of shade and stagnant Florida air), and the birds are coming to the refuge in droves. After I stopped on the refuge customer’s middle on my manner in, one of many volunteers working there handed me a map, drawn in with the birds you might be most probably to at the moment see. Overwintering geese are returning to the refuge like buffleheads, green-winged teals, and Northern Shovelers. Waterfowl congregates in huge numbers on the lighthouse ponds, and it’s wonderful the sheer numbers of species you’ll be able to see floating there. On my manner into the refuge, I additionally noticed one of many resident bald eagles perched on his huge nest proper the place pine bushes give method to marsh, and the place I parked, by marker 104, I watched a northern harrier swooping throughout the water, the white band on its tail a flash of sunshine amidst its darkish brown physique. With a lot to see proper off the refuge highway—geese and egrets and herons and alligators and birds of prey—it raises the query: why enterprise removed from the highway in any respect?
![Alligator suns itself on a mud bank by Mounds Pool 3 at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_4919-small-1024x717.jpg)
![Alligator suns itself on a mud bank by Mounds Pool 3 at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_4919-small-1024x717.jpg)
![Roseate spoonbills, egrets, and ducks in Mounds Pool 2. Photo by Rob Diaz de Villegas.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_2833-small2-1024x683.jpg)
![Roseate spoonbills, egrets, and ducks in Mounds Pool 2. Photo by Rob Diaz de Villegas.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_2833-small2-1024x683.jpg)
Deeper within the refuge, I see extra of the identical: extra alligators sunning themselves on the financial institution and extra clusters of overwintering coots—little black dots floating en masse atop the water that migrate to Tallahassee within the winter. I additionally discovered I startled extra animals—animals that didn’t anticipate to see me there. Greater than as soon as, I pedaled to a lone pine tree or a thicket of grasses rising alongside the water and disturbed a Nice Blue Heron, an expertise that allowed me an opportunity to know the sheer measurement of the chook. Up shut, the heron is massive and gangly. Deep within the refuge, on the far aspect of Stony Bayou #2, I’ve additionally noticed flocks of roseate spoonbills and wooden storks, their numbers far higher than something I’ve seen near the refuge highway.
![Map of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, created by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/map-st-marks-unit-st-marks-nwr_0-1024x791.jpg)
![Map of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, created by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/map-st-marks-unit-st-marks-nwr_0-1024x791.jpg)
Navigating the Refuge Trails
I’ve tried to stroll and bike most of the trails at St. Marks and I’ve discovered that the upkeep of the paths can fluctuate significantly. Because of this in case you strike out on the paths, you could discover some extra accessible than others. As a result of there are such a lot of trails, nevertheless, in case you discover a path inaccessible, you’ll be able to at all times flip round and take a look at a special one.
A path that’s not mown is tough to bike, as are trails which were rooted up by hogs. I attempted biking path #127, which follows the north aspect of Stony Bayou Pool #2, and located it too tough due to all of the ruts created by hogs. I’ve discovered trails 122, 104, and 102 to be pretty maintained. Path #127 was a grassy dike and so it was comparatively simple for hogs to rut round and switch up the filth, whereas trails 122, 104, and 104 are manufactured from a compacted sand—a cloth that’s simpler to bike on and fewer fascinating to hogs. These trails are additionally extra ceaselessly used than a number of the different trails within the park. For example, path 122 is used for the refuge’s wildlife and birding excursions. These excursions, which run on Saturday mornings from late fall to early spring, are free (when you pay to get into the refuge). Guests are pushed across the refuge to chook, led by refuge volunteers. On our Bike and Run, my husband and I bumped into one among these excursions.
On my most up-to-date Bike and Run, I parked at gate 104 and took 128 to 122, circling again alongside the lighthouse highway, earlier than I took 122 out previous Stoney Bayou Swimming pools 1 and a couple of and the East Stony Bayou Pool. As a result of these trails meander previous loads of water, I noticed ample megafauna, and the paths themselves alternate between the compacted, gravely sand, which is best to navigate on a mountain bike, and mowed grass that’s barely tougher however nonetheless very doable if there hasn’t been hog exercise.
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/map-primitive-trails-st-marks-nwr-1-1024x791.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/map-primitive-trails-st-marks-nwr-1-1024x791.jpg)
As path 122 overlaps with the Florida Nationwide Scenic Path out previous the East Stony Bayou pool, I typically see feral hogs. The Florida Nationwide Scenic Path, ceaselessly shortened to the Florida Path, is a roughly 1,500-mile federally designated path that invitations hikers to trek throughout all the state, from the Massive Cypress Nationwide Protect in south Florida to the Gulf Islands Nationwide Seashore, on the panhandle. We’re fortunate, in St. Marks, to have a number of the most lovely and accessible sections of the Florida Path. Out on this path, I’ve seen lone hogs and households—as soon as I noticed a household, piglets and all, swimming throughout the bayou pool earlier than they emerged from the water and disappeared into thick vegetation. Seeing the hogs may be unnerving, and it’s vital to observe hog security—giving them loads of house, particularly once they have younger.
![Feral hog runs through a Refuge marsh.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DSC_0230-copy-small-1024x683.jpg)
![Feral hog runs through a Refuge marsh.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DSC_0230-copy-small-1024x683.jpg)
One among my favourite websites to cycle previous is a campground for through-paddlers on the Florida Circumnavigational Saltwater Paddling Path—a path that follows all the Florida coast from Pensacola to simply under Savannah, Georgia. The campground is off the Florida Path, close to the place Deep Creek cuts in direction of the mainland. Utilizing the campground requires a allow and is just for through-hikers and paddlers (these trying to finish these trails in full), however within the winter, when bugs are minimal, the campground appears to be like idyllic, tucked away behind a small pond surrounded by a hammock of palmettos. With the Spartina grass and palmetto fronds within the background, it couldn’t look extra Florida.
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0403-small-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0403-small-1024x768.jpg)
Having fun with Fall Wildflowers and Migratory Birds
All alongside the route, I’m astounded by the panorama. The waters teem with birds, and as occurs in our wonderful fall, the pathways are bordered by blooming grasses and wildflowers—goldenrod, pinky muhly grass, Bidens alba, and dozens of others. Within the distance, behind the Stony Bayou swimming pools, I see groves of palmetto bushes, their trunks tinged in black from latest burns, and if I bike far sufficient, the Florida Path will dump me right into a longleaf forest the place I can spot woodpeckers and flycatchers.
![Liesel rides by goldenrod, grasses, and sedges in bloom.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/b1aed8e6-a4f3-4f21-a7c3-5a596d95a9c4-1024x768.jpg)
![Liesel rides by goldenrod, grasses, and sedges in bloom.](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/b1aed8e6-a4f3-4f21-a7c3-5a596d95a9c4-1024x768.jpg)
The outings really feel each like an unbiased exercise and a collaborative one. As a biker, I’m sooner than my husband is on foot, however I additionally make frequent stops to get a better have a look at birds via my binoculars. I’ll sit and chook and my husband will catch up, passing me by briefly. We alternate between chatting and being in our personal worlds, and we’ve discovered a method to reclaim our weekend outside adventures collectively. The gorgeous factor about Tallahassee is how versatile and plentiful its outside recreation may be and a part of what I’m studying is the best way to use these ample areas in ways in which most go well with what I’m on the lookout for.
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DSC_0224-copy-small-1024x683.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DSC_0224-copy-small-1024x683.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_7982-small-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-health/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_7982-small-1024x768.jpg)
[ad_2]
Source link