I found Bayard Conservation Area (PHOTO) (BCA) thanks to geocaching. It's 10,000 acres along the west bank of the St Johns river in Clay County that has been set aside for reclamation. Reclamation from what? Pine tree farming. Not the Christmas tree kind, but the kind used for commercial paper. They reclaim it by thinning the tree density to a more natural level (natural? Wouldn't there be 300 year old Live Oaks if it were?) They also use prescribed burning to control the underbrush.
Until the purchase by the St. Johns River Water Management District the land had been managed for perhaps 60 or 70 years to grow the highest density of pines possible that are harvested every few decades.
The conservation area has fire roads running through it, some public education stations, two primitive camping areas, marked trails and some unmarked trails. There is one observation tower that isn't tall enough to observe much, but is a nice short hike from the parking area and has more than a few paper wasps and mud daubers living in it. (Just like my house if I didn't knock them down every single weekend in the summer.)
The story begins...and since this is about Part Deux of my night hiking there, I'll not go into Part Un until a later post. (Order, yet out of order.)
Since geocaching was born of the internet, everyone that plays the game uses handles. My handle is The AIIM Team, which is just the first four letters of the names of my wife and kids. I used to be "The I" but we had a daughter with an I first name, so I just gave up and go by Ivan. I always thought nicknames were given to you by other people, so it's hard for me to think one up for myself.
I went to BCA with my buddy Zephyrus (see what I am saying, handles) to do some cache maintenance on one of his caches. It would also be a find for me. It was to be a 3 mile round trip over fairly well groomed dirt roads starting just before sunset. It was about 50 degrees, clear with a strong moon and little wind. I knew where we were heading since I have biked and hiked out there before. Camping area 5. Riverfront. My last visit was on my trusty mountain bike. I was pretty sure I heard a wild boar rustling in the woods behind the campsite that time, but that's another tale.
The interesting thing about night hiking when you haven't done it but once or twice in your adult life is that it's easy to be spooked by noises. I know that they hunt wild pig, deer, turkey on the on the huntable portions of the BCA. I have seen raccoon, a fox, squirrels and various scat. And I have been told there are bears in the area, too. Neither Zephyrus nor I have any weapons except a 3" knife. I have a walking stick, the aluminum-ish kind. I'm not worried about running into anything harmful, except perhaps that boar, but I also know that I haven't hiked in the BCA at night near the river. The river is where animals drink water.
Luckily for me Zephyrus likes to talk as much as I do and between us there is hardly any silence. I carry a medium-sized Camelback backpack but Z, he carries a plastic grocery bag with his stuff in it. Plastic grocery bags, for all of the beauty assigned to them in the movie American Beauty make a lot of noise. So between the talking and the grocery bags and my 2-C Mag-Lite with 3-watt LCD conversion and his camping flashlight and Coleman electric lantern, I doubt any humans want to bother us let alone wild animals.
But there is still something about knowing that you are the only 2 people for a mile or two that is creepy. And it took a good while for my ears to distinguish the difference between crinkling grocery bags and a bear walking into the road through the saw palmettos. Thank goodness we were lit up like a small yacht in a boat parade.
The weather stayed clear and the hike was invigorating. I was a little underdressed for a Florida boy, just a henley shirt and a North Face vest jacket, like people use for skiing, I think. I wouldn't know.
The distinctive thing about this hike was that it was fairly routine. I was looking over my shoulder at times, but it was just good exercise.
I expected the tension of my previous night hike, the previous Monday. It was my first night hike since I was in college. It was raining and about 55 degrees. I just met Z that night. I had a weak flashlight and he cut out for home after the first leg of a two leg hike that night. I understood, early work schedule and all. So I ended up doing a cache that is pretty famous around here and distinctive since you don't use your GPS at all. You follow reflective tacks in the trees to the destination and then a reflective sign indicates the cache location. The tacks are few and far between.
I completed that cache. It was my highest difficulty yet of 72 finds and about 90 attempts. But I had some fear in me while doing it, alone, in the rain, to an area of the BCA I had never been. That was thrilling.
I have been to both campsites, the observation tower, the raccoon amphitheater (education area under a big oak), and a few other places.
If you would like to visit Bayard Conservation Area, you are welcome to bike, hike, ride a horse, bring a leashed dog or canoe and kayak. I think you'll be portaging your boat about a mile, though. It's just east of Green Cove Springs and west of the Shands bridge between St. Johns and Clay counties over the St. Johns river.
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