Cypress Creek Preserve: Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out

Pasco County Parks and Recreation Department, along side with SwFWMD (aka "swiftmud") have been working hard for many years to preserve and upkeep the natural habits in our very own backyards (I actually did volunteer work in their office building on US-41, mainly shredding paper and moving furniture) Some counties are more proactive than others, I think Pasco does a good job. And that is only central west coast of Florida. There are many many more across all of America for anyone to take on the task of the trail, with training and brainpower, goals are accomplished. So to start small and work my way up; well I have done some of these a number of times already, growing up in the area; however, as the point of this blog, to track my progress of expanding more, and different trails.

Out on the trail electronics, documentation wise, I only have my Moto Droid and Sony Handycam 30GB camcorder, without any solar charging either (I'll have to look into solar usb charger). I would like to able to use my hike tracking app, and not destroy my battery in a matter of hours, but a smaller usage of battery power and still satisfying documentation could be using plain text my and awesome descriptive power! With something simple like a twitter or blogspot app, I have to conserve battery. I want to try and mix together some raw footage into something people might be interested to watch, expressing many techniques of self reliance. I need to buy a digital still photo camera. I also have a Zune I can listen to music.

There also comes a major aspect of survival knowledge while hiking for more than three days, I really don't want to waste all my time typing about how to survive, but I'll include as much as I can, including my entire pack and contents, as well as some techniques. Every human should know the rule of threes: 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water; and 3 weeks without food; the bare essentials of sustaining life. These can be exacerbated or alleviated in many ways. There tons of survival shows on discovery channel and others, all of which are majorly overproduced (except survivorman, they won't produce one any better than that) still teach many good lessons, but you should NOT watch these shows as 'training' for your own hike. The SAS survival guide is good starting point (read this like a bible, for you religious people), also you NEED to consult with your local parks and recreation center or a well know woodsman in your community about a training course with an expert for you and your party. If only hiking for the day or a few hours, hydrate and check the weather and hiking recommendations for that trail from you local parks and recreation dept., I'm not familiar with many preserve managers outside of Florida.
Last week I hiked most of Cypress Creek Preserve (aka The Pasco well fields) getting used to my new pack, on Thursday I hiked to both the camping sites, and read some of my book (art of self reliance, R W Emerson) really humid out, just over 3.5 miles that day. A few days after than I ran the 5k trail that goes past the camping around the back of Pine View Middle School. I borrowed a camera and they came out well.

Cannot find out how to export the map of my hike from droid app (I think its called 'all sport', it has good maps of trails and tracks your progress, I only use free versions, that could be why), if I figure it out I'll post it. Still finishing my pack, need a good camp knife. I already have a mess kit for cooking and cleaning drinking water, but I still need to make a good water filter. I could buy one but one could be made from simple materials, my first design will go in 3-4" diameter cylinder about 6" long (maybe aluminium) I was going to use cotton fiber fill at the bottom, a small layer of fine sand, pure charcoal, course sand, gravel, and more cotton fiber fill at the top. There will need to permeable layers on each end to hold the filter together, after this is field tested I will try improved, funnelled shapes. I should do a pH test to see which is more efficient, but they will both clog eventually and need to be replaced.