I often find not all trails are for me or to my liking for one thing or another. I had been on quite a few different trails up to this point as well. What I was not expecting was having to turn around and try again another day.
Seminole Wekiva Trail itself is almost 14 miles long, and it goes along a highway and quite a few busy areas. There are also quite a lot of ramps going down from parking lots behind different businesses along the way to get onto it.
This ended up being one of those kinds of trails I just could not stand. There were a lot of street crossings. While sure sections of it went off into behind homes, I was hoping for a lot more woods. I however knew with its location that dealing with road crossing was going to be a big thing.
I was also surprised to see just how many benches for resting there were along this trail. I’ve been on trails you are lucky to have a bench every couple of miles. The issue however was none of them were open, at least in the morning when I showed up to give this place a try.
There were not only a lot of homeless people sleeping on every bench they could find open. There were many of them sleeping in the alleyways and other areas around businesses that ran along this trail. Needless to say, with how drug and mental health issues are going for this nation I was starting to feel a bit unsafe.
It became rather apparent I was not going to try doing different sections of this trail. With it being point-to-point there would be no true way to loop around unless I wanted to go off the trail and use quite a lot of sidewalks along the way to make my sort of trail out of things.
For large sections of the trail, there were some trees this trail cut through. It felt like it was an attempt to give you the illusion that you were in the woods. Expect, they were mostly one or two trees thick. You could hear cars and people screaming at people along the way. Not my kind of fun.
What I did not know at the time was that I'd be returning to this trail a few days later. You see, I was kind of pushing myself somewhat hard. I had hit up quite a lot of trails without many resting days. The day I went on this trail was supposed to be a resting day, but I was asked if I wanted to come along anyway.
After a few steps onto the trail, I could tell my ankle was not in the best shape. It was not to a point just yet where I had concerns and thoughts that I should cut things short and turn around. It, however, would not take long before that would end up happening.
After a couple of road crossings and feeling a little already on the edge. We believe someone on some kind of motorized scooter ran a red and cut off a truck. They then sped forward and slammed on their brakes in the middle of the road to block the truck.
The person on the scooter wanted to start something with the person in the truck. I don’t know what kind of crazy you have to be. A lot of people in this area do have guns. So, we felt it was best to quickly back ourselves up and make some distance away from some guy picking a full-on fight with a truck.
In my attempt to get some distance away from the area of trouble, my ankle had enough. Once the fight in the street had cleared up. Despite just wanting to go forward and finish off this trail to never come back. I knew I was not going to get as far as I wanted on my ankle.
So, it was time to turn around and give up for the day. I was a bit disappointed at first, feeling like I gave up too early. The next couple of days I can say I'm glad I did. My ankle was not having it. I had to give it some much-needed rest.
After some much-needed rest, I made a return to this trail. This time I showed up a couple of hours later in the day. Most of the benches were still filled with people sleeping. At least both times none of those people gave us any kind of issue. I kind of look homeless myself so I would not be shocked that no one tried to beg money from us.
I then made it back to the part where I turned around last time. Thankfully no crazy people trying to fight in the middle of the road. So, it was time to press on. While my ankle was not fully back to where it was. It was doing much better than the last time.
As such there were a lot more road crosses to go. Some of them are quite massive with lots of waiting. What I never understand is the brains of people on bikes. They always just fly past these intersections. I even saw cards having to slam on their brakes a few times to avoid hitting the fools.
For the most part, this trail did not have any of the kind of views I enjoy. Just lots of roads and buildings. It was at least not all that. Still not my kind of trail.
At one point the trail ran between a section of homes. I’ve noticed on a few trails they love to take advantage of all the space powerlines take up and use some of that land for a trail. While this at least gave me a break from seeing busy roadways. I don’t consider this an upgraded view either.
I was hoping there be something of interest by the time I got to the end of the trail. The end for me was the start of the trail itself.
By the time we got there, there was no park or anything fun. Heck, they did not even have enough space to put a bench in at marker 0.0 it was a couple of steps back. Just a sign welcoming you to the town. Kind of disappointing.
It was now time to return to the way we went and to go back. For about a mile we had to fight quite a massive surge of wind that was not going in the direction we were headed. I even noticed a couple of people on bikes struggling with the wind.
We even got a very strange bust of rain on us. Thankfully it was quite short. I must have only gotten a couple dozen raindrops on myself. Between that and the wind I was thankful we were starting to head back as you could see more clouds forming in the sky.
Final Thoughts
Screenshot from AllTrails
Sometimes you just turn back if your body is telling you to do so and attempt a trial another day. With how much I dislike this trail as well it’s doubtful I'll head in the other direction and check to see what else it has to offer. It looks like it mostly just runs along even more of the highway. I don’t care for these kinds of city trails.
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Photos were taken and content was written by @Enjar about my personal experiences in the real world away from the computer at home.