Harold Williams Cooney

Thursday, December 25th, 2025. Campsite 163 in the Salt Springs Recreation Area. Tented next to my site’s picnic table. Off m458.3 of the Florida Trail. Woke naturally at about 645 am. Clear and calm, 57°. 29.354080,-81.731412

I don’t sleep too poorly, I guess. A lot of negative thoughts. Decades of loneliness and inability to form connections, I hate this holiday.

My lack of holiday cheer is worn off by the opportunity of the grocery store. I get a coffee. Two chicken tenders. Potato wedges and an unfortunate object called a potato ball. It’s all pretty terrible. I do my shopping. Charge my stuff. Get a pint of ice cream. I take my time. There is no rush.

Map study says take the road back to trial, that’s my plan. 3.3 miles, Google says. 20 mile water carry it looks like right away. Out at 1030, feeling like I over ate. This is a common issue because I overcompensate for poor mental health. Lol.

After the dam trail comes up on top of a levee. I had read several notes about the trail that I’ll be getting to tomorrow that says how it’s wet, ankle deep water, mud, these kinds of things. It made them levy look like real nice camping, and I decided to stop a little bit earlier than I had planned.

I had also noticed several large bear poops up on top of the levee, some of them clearly very recent, but, you know, I just decided to set camp.

I was awakened about 10:45 by what sounded to me like more than one bear poking around my tent site. I immediately asserted myself into the environment. It was quite the situation. Multiple minutes. The animals seem hesitant to leave my area. I got out of my tent to advance the confrontation. I never did see anything. The best I got was the loud lumbering sound of one of the animals, cutting down the levee, behind my tent at a run. The second of the animals took off as I was exiting my tent.

I went back to sleep.

Milage:

From town to trail, 3.3 miles. On trail at 461.4, camped at 482.0, Farout has it as 20.5 miles, math says 20.6. So 23.8 ish.

This is honestly a low number. I shouldn’t have stopped when I did. Perhaps it would have prevented a bear encounter and would have improved my numbers.