Senior year has taken off with full force, as I find myself swamped with homework, research, my jobs, and extracurricular activities (namely gardening and club stuff). If I didn’t love all this, I wouldn’t do it — but I guess I’ve sort of hit that mid-semester lull where the workloads just seem impossible. As a testament to this, almost my entire Halloweekend was spent squirreled away in my room writing papers, reading, and doing research, and STILL I’ve barely made a dent in my to-do list.

I really can’t complain though — fall break was last weekend, and, while it didn’t quite satisfy my brain’s need for some rest, I was able to get outside and just have some fun.

For break, I co-led a camping trip for Eckerd’s Outdoor Adventure Club. A friend of mine revamped the club last year (it had pretty much died by my freshman year) and this semester it has been incredibly successful. Serving as one of the VPs for the club, I helped to plan a short backpacking trip to Withlacoochee State Forest, a couple hours north of here. As chance would have it, nothing went as planned. However, it turned out to be by far the best weekend I’ve had this semester.

On our way up to the state forest, we stopped at a little roadside farmer’s market, where a couple of friendly shopkeepers informed us of a Florida cracker festival going on down the road. Lo and behold, a few minutes away we found the cracker fest, stopped for some lunch, and within the hour we found ourselves in the midst of a small cattle drive.

It was a rather random event to stumble upon, but quite entertaining!

By that time it was getting later and we all decided to scrap our backpacking plans and just enjoy the trip and go along with whatever happened. It was a good thing we did too, because things proceeded to go completely opposite of what we planned on, but turned out to be more fun than I ever could have hoped.

When we arrived at the primitive campsite, it turned out to be already occupied. As we were hiking the trail to find an unoccupied spot, we came out to a beautiful river overlook but were distracted by a putrid smell.

“Look at that big bird!” one of the freshmen pointed out to me. Ever the nature geek, I started to correct him that it was in fact, a black vulture, when we all realized at the same time what the vulture was sitting on: a 10 foot long dead alligator!

It was one of the biggest alligators I have ever seen in the wild, and quite a shame it was dead. After gawking at the gator for a while and finishing the hike (finding no open campsites), we drove to the next closest campground, which wasn’t as primitive but was fortunately completely deserted; we had the whole place all to ourselves.

It was a fun night. We cooked a big pot of soup over a camp stove, hiked some more, hung out in our tents, and eventually settled down for a chilly night listening to the call of insects and nighthawks, and the distant rumble of air boats on the river.

The next day, we packed up, ate a quick breakfast and headed back south to go visit the Withlacoochee cave system. I had visited these caves as a kid almost 10 years ago, and they were quite different than I remembered.

Physically the cave was the same — I vividly recalled the magical entry through the roots of a dead tree into the limestone caverns of the giant sink hole — but unlike 10 years ago, today the caves are literally crawling with people.

Tour groups, families, and hikers were flowing in and out of the cave tunnels like ants in an ant hill. Although the plethora of spelunkers took away a little bit from the experience I remembered from my childhood, it was still fun to squeeze through the tiny passages and come out in big caverns lit only by our flashlights.

We spent a couple hours exploring around in the caves before heading back to campus and watching the sunset over dinner. Although this marked the end of the camping trip, my fall break outdoor adventures were not quite over.

On the last day of break, my roommate and I decided to spend the morning kayaking. It was chilly at first, and we were the first ones at the waterfront. We launched our kayaks and were quickly off through Frenchman’s Creek and out into the smooth waters of Boca Ciega Bay. We made it out to the nearby island and spent a couple hours meandering around the mangroves, watching mullet leap out of the water, yellow-crowned night herons squawk and take off clumsily from their roosts, and brown pelicans glide serenely over the gentle waves.

By the time we decided to head back to school, the sun had warmed the air but the wind had picked up as well. At some points it seemed I was paddling in place, the wind was so strong! Nevertheless, we made it back to campus safe and sound, if not slightly exhausted.

And so ended my fall break. It felt amazing to be outside again, not worrying about school or life for a few blissful days. But now it’s over and back to the usual routine. On top of that, I’m trying to get ahead in my work since next weekend I’m road tripping it up to Asheville, NC for the Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference. More details to come on that — for now, back to work!