Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area Trail Project

This American Hiking Society Volunteer vacation was for the Bureau of Land Management's Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area, a 120 acre site located in northern Palm Beach County on Florida's Treasure Coast. It is home to a remarkable array of natural and cultural resources including four sensitive natural habitats, 26 species with special status, and archaeological evidence of human occupation dating back over 5000 years.

We were tasked with helping build a new loop trail through this unique habitat. The mile-long trail corridor had been flagged three weeks earlier, and other groups had cut down the trees and bushes in the new corridor, but they had thrown the cut-offs into the vegetation on both sides of the new trail which would eventually affect the ecology of the area (as well as look bad.)  We pulled this debris onto the trail and then carried, pulled, and wheel-barrowed it to the trailhead for disposal.

The temperatures reached the middle and upper 80s with humidity over 50 percent, so we were sweating and exerting ourselves. Several of us had step-counter devices and we were walking 6 to 8 miles a day!

In the future, these accumulated cut-offs will be shredded and the mulch will be used as the new trail tread material.

Sharon, Sheila, Linda, and I along with BLM employees Neal and intern Cecily labored four days to clear the debris from the trail...

...and then we had to locate and remove the stumps and stalks protruding up which were dangerous tripping hazards, after which our BLM supervisor, Peter, demonstrated how he wanted us to level the trail before the mulch was applied......

 Finally, we spread the supply of mulch which was already available, thus completing a section of the trail and showing what the finished trail will eventually look like...

It will be a beautiful trail and the mulch tread will make for comfortable and safe footing...

Our AHS crew: Sheila, Sharon, Linda (our leader), and Chuck

Our BLM workers, Neal and intern Cecily

The Lighthouse and Museum

The Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse dates to 1860. Peter took us on a special tour of the lighthouse and the grounds, and he explained how there were two types of lighthouses -- those that show the way to a safe harbor and those that warn boats to stay away from hazardous reefs. Juniper Lighthouse falls into this second category and its light reaches 25 miles out to sea!

The lighthouse has a Fresnel lens which was developed by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for lighthouses and it has been called "the invention that saved a million ships." It allows this small light to be  seen over 25 miles away.

Several of us climbed to the top...

...and enjoyed the view of Jupiter Island, the Loxahatchee and Indian Rivers, and the Jupiter Inlet.

...as well as the Atlantic Ocean Coastline.

A side note:  This project was held the week that the worsening Coronavirus pandemic was sweeping the world. AHS cancelled all projects for the next 8 weeks and was about to send us home midweek until they learned the four of us volunteers each had our own bedroom in our lodging and thus could practice some amount of "social distancing" so we were allowed to finish the week's labors.

Here is a 5 minute video of this project...

My other volunteer trail projects

Biking Florida's Bluegill Trail

The Bluegill Trail runs 7.5 miles along the C-18 Canal in northeastern Palm County which  extends 19 miles and drains 99 square miles of residential and agricultural land as well as large tracts of natural wetlands. It drains northward to the Loxahatchee River and was constructed in the mid 1950s. The Sandhill Crane Access Park seen below is located on PGA Boulevard (route 786) between the Florida Turnpike and Highway 710, and the Bluegill Trail runs 5.5 miles north along the east bank of the canal, and another 2 miles south from the trailhead.

The trail is hard rock /shell surface with some loose rock in places. I saw a road bike on the trail but would not suggest using one on this trail due to some rough spots. Here's the map found at the trailhead...

...and here is the start of the northbound part of the trail. A fairly new addition heads south across PGA Blvd. and goes two more miles to Northlake Boulevard ending in Grassy Waters Preserve in Palm Beach Gardens.

At Jupiter's exceptional Riverbend Park you'll see this bridge which takes you over to the west side of the canal where there is an entrance to this extensive park.

Miccosukee Greenway Road and Trail

Only five miles from the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee, the Miccosukee Canopy Road is a beautiful two-lane roadway, one of 9 canopy roads in the area following Native American trails that were later used by Spanish explorers and American settlers.

The trail parallels the road for nearly 7 miles through a linear park of 500 acres. Hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding are permitted on the gravel and stone trail through groves of pine and hardwood trees...

...as well as open meadows.

I was passing through town, and due to the morning rainstorm, I only had time for a 7 mile roundtrip on the trail. One caveat -- although the trail may appear to be level,  it was 450+ feet of elevation gain for that short distance.

Parking can be found along Miccosukee Road at Edenfield, Thornton and Crump Roads. The western-most lot has full bathroom facilities and all lots at least have a porta-potty.

15th Anniversary of My Near Death Experience

Every day is a bonus day for me since January of 2005, the day I committed one of the most egregious judgment errors of my life, one which nearly ended my life. I was visiting and photographing the site of my new townhome under construction, something I had also done throughout the construction of my first two homes. It was just after work hours and I was taking photos of the first floor studding, ever so careful realizing full well that I was trespassing and that I was alone, but curious as to progress of my retirement home and desirous of documenting the construction with photos -- photos which in my prior homes I often referred to when hanging shelves, tracing electric and plumbing runs, etc.



The air was nippy in the upper 20s and snow adorned the ground. Dusk would soon fall. I arrived after workmen had left for the day, and realizing full well that I was alone, I was being very cautious, for work sites have boards and nails and the like strewn about, a veritable obstacle course fraught with danger. I had walked the wood decking the day before, and today I was checking the craftsmanship of the studding and window openings erected that day.

After taking a few photos, I headed back to my car, but then returned to see if the sump pump hole in the basement was in the proper location. In the model home, the plumbers had put it on the wrong side of the basement. I had pointed out the error to the construction superintendent, Jon, and he had assured me it would be placed correctly in my unit, an important issue since I wanted the sump pump to be in the workshop, not the family room, when I finished the basement. So I cautiously ventured to the edge of the flooring near the cinder block common wall (on the left in photo above) where I could extend the camera through an opening in the floor to take basement photos.

And that’s all I can recall for over 24 hours.

My sons went to the accident site the next day at the behest of the police to retrieve my blood-spattered vehicle. They talked to the responding officer, retrieved my camera, and talked to the construction boss. Scott, a licensed architect, snuck into the basement and took photos of it and the first floor in an attempt to reconstruct what had occurred. We also got a copy of the police report to assist in determining the sequence of events. Using my photos and those taken by Scott, along with the police report, we later reconstructed the missing hours for my memory.

There were no stairs into the basement yet because the concrete basement floor had not been poured due to several inches of ice accumulation. On the first floor, the plywood covering the basement stairway opening was only loosely-placed plywood, not the secure solid wood I'd walked on the day before. No guard rails blocked access to the loose plywood. Three 2x4s were standing diagonally on the loose plywood floor and leaning against the cinder block common wall, giving the appearance of a secure floor. A comparison with Scott’s photos from the next day showed the loose plywood and the 2x4s down in the basement (photo below), so I obviously stepped or fell onto the loose plywood thinking it was secure and went down with them, nine feet to the ice floor. My cap and blood are also seen below...




The photo below, taken by my son the day after my fall, clearly shows that the builder had belatedly installed OSHA-mandated guard rails around the three sides of the basement opening and had even spray painted these guard rails orange to make them more visible (they are missing in the photo 2 photos above.). “No trespassing” signs had also been posted outside the garage. In the photo below, you can see the opening on the far right where the loose plywood flooring took me downstairs.




The photo below was also taken by my son and shows the 2 pieces of the plywood flooring that took me down when they fell, as well as the 2x4s that had been leaning vertically on the plywood pieces.

I was probably briefly unconscious from the fall. My head was profusely bleeding from a foot-long cut from the metal straps in the concrete wall. I somehow managed to crawl to the back window, climbed out, made my way alongside the building back to my car, turned it around, and drove two blocks to the corner, but could go no farther. A grandmother awaiting the school bus bringing her grandson home saw me bleeding and flagged another driver who had a cell phone. He called 911, the paramedics declared me a “Trauma 1” case, summoned the Flight-for-Life helicopter, and I was flown to Lutheran General Hospital where nearly three dozen stitches were administered. I have a vague memory of someone in the ER asking, "How am I supposed to stitch this laceration up?"



A CAT scan was taken and it was determined that I had cracked three vertebrae (C1, C2, and C5), so they planned surgery the next day to remove bone chips, but an MRI the next day revealed surgery was unnecessary, though I had to wear a neck brace constantly for three months.

For months, I had numbness along the head laceration due to severed nerves. Apparently I landed on my right side since my right elbow, hand, and shoulder were painful to move and my neck had some loss of mobility. Fifteen years later now, I still have no memory of the fall, of my self-rescue from the basement, or of driving my vehicle for help. I have no memory of talking to the police, of the paramedics arrival, or of my Flight-for-Life helicopter ride to the emergency room. I have only snatches of memory of being in the ER and snippets of the first day in Surgery Intensive Care Unit. But other than some reduction in neck range-of-motion, all has healed.

I have a disdain for the way Americans so readily file lawsuits, even when they are at fault for their own injuries. Examples of this abound in the news and such lack of personal responsibility is abhorrent to me. I realize I should not have been at the site unescorted and that it is a poor excuse to claim that “everyone does it” -- though many new homeowners do make unauthorized visits to their future homes. So despite my lawyer and others encouraging me to sue the builder because he hadn’t abided by OSHA safety rules, I refused to sue. Quite simply -- if I hadn’t been trespassing, I wouldn’t have fallen.

Two months after moving in, I began finishing the basement into several rooms, using that immense project as “therapy” for my body and my mind. I did all the carpentry, electric wiring, wall-boarding, painting, and trim work myself -- albeit slowly and for short stretches of time. I was still wearing the neck brace those first few weeks of construction and needed naps after only a few hours of labor. As the summer progressed, the brace was unnecessary and I took fewer and fewer naps and worked longer hours in the basement, and by October the project was done. Here's part of the finished basement...



That summer, my rehabbing of the basement had likewise rehabbed myself, and I felt strong enough to embark on a five week Fall trip to New England where I participated in a volunteer trail project and two Elderhostel programs -- one biking and one biking, hiking, and kayaking. That was when I truly knew I was fully healed.

But I feel eminently blessed. I am alive and fully mobile. Realizations of what “might have been” rush through my mind on occasion and I cherish what God had done for me in sparing my life and mobility. To this day, my bedtime prayers still begin with, “Thank you, God, for another bonus day of life!” for that is how I feel. Every new day is an extra day granted to me, so I endeavor to make the most of each. My good pal Greg, a guide in Florida, always introduces me to new folks with these words: “Here’s Chuck, who does more in one year than most people do in their lifetime!” May it be so for years to come!

This lifestory is truly a LIFE story, and for the record, I now use the stairs when I descend into the basement!

24th Anniversary of My Website

Twenty-four years ago (January of 1996) I began a website called Chuck's Backpacking Bonanza which documented with photos and information my 60+ backpacking adventures across the country. There were very few Internet gateways to such information back then (no Google yet either!) and my site became one of the go-to tools for such information. I regularly got questions about where and how to backpack and answered every question. For those who recall, uploading photos and webpages back then was slow and arduous and done by slow telephone modem. What takes seconds now took minutes back then and the resolution of the photos was poor.

As the years progressed and technology improved, I added my biking, rafting, kayaking, and canoeing adventures to the site and changed the name to Bike, Hike, and Paddle which now serves as the index for my Chuck's Adventures site. Together the two sites have had over 610,000 visits and contain over fifteen thousand photos. Then a decade ago I began making videos of my adventures, and my YouTube channel has over 150 movies with over 500,000 views. It's rewarding to share my outdoor adventures with so many people! Enjoy!

White Sands National Park

White Sands National Park, our 62nd and newest national park as of December, 2019, is located in New Mexico at an elevation of 4,235 feet. It comprises the southern part of a 275 square mile field of white sand dunes crystals (calcium sulfate) located in this, the northernmost portion of the Chihuahuan Desert. It represents the largest such field of gypsum on Earth and includes gypsum hearthmounds found nowhere else, and the park preserves a major portion of this unique dune field along with the indigenous flora and fauna living there.

The idea of creating a national park to protect the white sands formation dates to 1898, but it wasn't until January 18, 1933, that President Herbert Hoover, using the 1906 Antiquities Act, authorized White Sands National Monument "to preserve the white sands and additional features of scenic, scientific, and educational interest."

The monument is completely surrounded by military installations and has always had an uneasy relationship with the military due to "misguided" missiles falling on the park and at times destroying visitor areas. Unfortunately, planes still destroy the serenity of the park at times, and the proximity of these military installations are also the reason why it hasn't been named a World Heritage Site. The bases sometimes close the park due to missile tests, so visitors are encouraged to check before heading to the park. 

Footprints of humans and ground sloths dating to the last ice age show that ground sloths lived at White Sands and were hunted by humans at least 11,700 years ago. The park is home to the Earth's largest collection of Ice Age fossilized footprints. White Sands is a living laboratory with new discoveries constantly being made. In fact, park rangers are virtually teachers who invite classrooms of students to come learn about the park and offer materials and lesson plans for teachers to use. 

Gypsum is rarely found as sand because it dissolves in contact with water, but the isolation of the area and the weather patterns of the Tularosa Basin create a unique experience here. The sand is extremely soft and can break down easily, and since the grains reflect light rather than allowing it to pass through, visitors enjoy its snowy appearance. The park considers this to be a "wet environment" with its 100% humidity. The shallow water table beneath the dunes acts like a glue that holds the dunes in place.

With about 600,000 visitors annually (comparably sized Zion National Park receives 4.3 million), White Sands is among the wildest and most pristine national parks. It offers no RV parks, campgrounds, or formal accommodations, although limited backcountry camping is allowed at designated sites in the heart of the dunes and a picnic area is available. In 2017, it spurred more than $31 million in local spending.

Reaching the sites requires a mile-long trek from the only road that runs through the park. 

Visitors can hike trails that range from easy to extremely difficult and they can also attend ranger-led programs. You can even sled down the dunes in certain areas.

In the summer, temperatures drop to the 60s at night and can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. In the winter, the mercury only ranges between 30 and 60 degrees. Constantly blowing dust and sand create frequent white-out conditions and the wind can erase hikers’ footsteps in a matter of minutes. The winds also can cause the dunes to "travel" 12 to 13 feet per year.  Also be aware that GPS signals are sometimes unreliable.

Contact the park:

Mailing Address:

PO Box 1086 
Holloman AFB, NM 88330 

Phone:

(575) 479-6124

Nathanael James

Nathanael James Morlock

   December 31, 2006

God opened the door

and I glimpsed us traipsing forested paths,

your tiny hand clutching mine,

eyes atwinkle and joyous smile 

radiating off trees and illuminating clouds,

as robins serenaded us in blazing sunlight

and owls scolded by crackling campfire light.

What joy I envisioned us sharing!

Then He closed the door

and the embers’ glow ceased,

extinguished by the ocean of tears

dissolving my dream.

The songbirds fell silent

and dark sorrow engulfed me, 

exiling all joy.

For your tiny perfect fingers

would never clasp mine, 

and your shining eyes 

and beaming smile

would never dispel the harsh darkness.

I now wander this darker, quieter earth

saddened and confused,

but certain through faith

that you are not lost

but surrounded by joy 

we do not yet comprehend

but will one day share with you 

for eternity.

Biking Loveland, Colorado's Recreation Trail

The 26 mile Loveland recreation Trail, which is comprised of several local trails with roadways used as connections, encircles the town which calls itself "The Gateway to the Rockies." Much of the trail follows the Big Thompson River as it passes through several parks. My motel was on Eisenhower Blvd. (Rte.34)  and just happened to be a block from where the trail goes under the road, so I biked that section of the trail which is on the east side of town.

Here's the map that's posted in many places along the trail.

I soon came to a residential road and didn't see any sign indicating where the trail went, so I followed a biker I saw a few hundred yards ahead of me. The trail went from paved to this gravel/dirt path and soon was alongside a canal, but since my mountain bike had no trouble on the surface, I kept going for a mile-plus before realizing I wasn't on the actual trail, so I turned around and went back to the street and then saw a sign pointing down the residential street.

After a few blocks of residences, I arrived at a paved trail with a trail sign which I biked ...

...and arrived at the west shore of Boyd Lake on a nice paved path with lovely scenery for miles. I enjoyed the sights and the boats and people enjoying the water and the playgrounds, but it was getting to be late afternoon so after six or more miles, I turned around and headed back to the motel to check in, having enjoyed being out biking for an hour or more. Nice trail and lovely scenery!

If I hadn't had to leave the next morning to meet a volunteer service group in Rocky Mountain National Park, I would have liked to have biked on one of Loveland's nice unpaved trails. Maybe next time I'm in this part of Colorado!

Biking Ft. Collins, Colorado's Spring Creek Trail

The Spring Creek Trail travels seven miles through Ft. Collins on a paved, flat  surface, with tunnels under many of the larger roads. I was passing through town on my way to Rocky Mountain National Park, and I began my ride at Edora Community Park's disc golf range because it was easy to find off the interstate. I headed east and quickly reached its end point at the Poudre River Trail at the Cattail Chorus Natural Area. Since I'd biked part of that trail my last time in Colorado a few years back, I turned around, went back to the parking lot and then kept going west on the Spring Creek Trail for another six miles or so. Mile markers are placed every quarter mile.

Here's a map of the Ft. Collins trail system -- sorry for the poor quality of the photo due to the sun. Spring Creek Trail runs from the Powder River Trail west to West Drake Road/ Spring Canyon Community Park and the Pineridge Natural Area.

The trail had a lot of spur trails and a couple times I had to turn around and get back on the main trail, but it was pretty heavily traveled that Sunday and I discovered I could just follow the flow of traffic and stay on course. The creek had lots of lovely scenery...

...and even a small dam with lots of wildflowers on the banks...

...and a few housing areas...

...and even a few small ranch-type areas, so the scenery kept changing.

Many of the roads had underpasses...