Biking Florida's Cross Florida Greenway Trails

The Cross Florida Greenway Trail has several trailheads. I parked by the Land Bridge trailhead which is connected by trails to the Santos trails. (This is an updated post from the original I posted in 2009.) If you are curious what a "land bridge" looks like from on the bridge and from the expressway, see the last 2 photos of this post.

The address of this trailhead is 12555 SW 16th Avenue if you want to use your GPS to locate it. It is just off I-75 exit 341.

There are "blue" (intermediate difficulty) and "yellow" (easier trails) with the difference in difficulty probably due to the blue trails having numerous short sandy sections, a number of brief ups and downs, a multitude of very tight turns, and lots of narrow passages between trees, often only a few inches wider than your handlebars -- all of which added to the enjoyment of the outing. Here's Ellen heading back up after a downhill in the Canal Diggings section...




... and another uphill later...





Here's Bob as we bike a yellow trail. The yellow trail makes a loop from the Land Bridge Trailhead to the next section west, the Christmas section.

Then the blue trail (called Nayl's Trail) takes you farther west after you go under 49th Avenue, and this area, called Shangri La, traverses trickier terrain and even has this wooden "roller coaster" construction to get you through a gnarly section.

As is obvious, the scenery is drop-dead gorgeous and despite it being Saturday, we had the place nearly to ourselves (perhaps due to the bike race just a few miles east on the trail.) A loud rustling we heard was this armadillo that scampered (he thinks) out of sight off the trail, though only his head is in the hole...





The Land Bridge -- so-named because it has land and landscaping atop it to allow bike riders, hikers on the Florida Trail, equestrians, and wildlife to safely cross I-75 -- is seen here from the interstate. Notice the trees and bushes in place of traffic on top...




...and here's a look down from the bridge onto the expressway...




The Cross Florida Greenway Trail is named for conservationist Marjorie Harris Carr, Florida's first female wildlife technician, whose efforts led to creation Of Paynes Prairie Preserve and whose lengthy battle stopped the construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, a mammoth, multi-million dollar project to traverse central Florida that threatened the area's ecosystem.

For trailhead info and maps, see here.