Hal Scott Regional Preserve

Let me start with the positive. The hike out before it becomes an existentially destabilizing prairie: not bad. It's just a dirt road but not bad. We've seen rabbits. We've seen a fair number of birds. It's near a couple other large forests including Tosahatchee so add them all up and that's a lot of wilderness to attract animals. That is the last good thing I have to say about this. Oh wait - one more.

Driving past this kind of thing on the interstate I always thought it was gorgeous. Huge expanse of palmettos with a second layer of tall pine trees. (Usually there are more pines than this place.) The problem I have with hiking it is it just never changes. After a while I get delirious on this palmetto prairies and always make the same joke: I'm going to take two pictures, repeat them 100 times on the website and they will have the exact experience of being here. And what really stinks is that it always looks like you're walking to make it to those trees "over there"... but eventually you realize that the trail will always turn to safely avoid anything interesting like a forest.

I'm sure there is wildlife out here - I know there are deer etc. But you aren't going to see them. You could put on x-ray specks and find out there are bobcat, panther, mink, fox squirrels, and they're all having tea parties 10 feet from you - but you'll never see them because they are under the sea of palmetto bushes. You do hear things move in there sometimes.

And same for birds. Within binocular distance you'll be able to see a handful of trees within reasonable distance and it's rare to see a bird in them. I don't see what the bird would get out of flying to it. Same with the palmettos - not many birds can really land on a palm frond. I'm sure there could be a million doves under the palmettos if you got out your xray spex but they are happy staying there.

ALL that said - it is wilderness. You are away from it all. If that's what hiking is about for you then I can see loving this. If you were on a horse and you had a better vantage, or if you were on a bike and it all went by much faster - again I could see this becoming a different experience. But hiking - misery. And god help you if you try this in summer because there's more shade on a beach.