Monocog Log: Halpatiokee Regional Park Review

11-12-2010
Today, I left the apt at about 3:15PM for Halpiotokee Regional Park in Stuart, FL. Here is the location of the trailhead. It was a relatively short drive up to the park and no traffic. The park was nice and a mix of Fort Pierce and Pinehurst. There were plenty of roots and sand, but also a lot of smooth, relatively fast, good flowing parts of this trail.

The photos I have below are low quality. I didn't realize how poor the quality was until I looked at them later. I was using the app Motion X GPS. It's a good app, but I'd really like to have the option to change the quality in the app instead of going into the regular camera app.

The trail seemed well marked the first few miles even to the point of being obnoxious in the middle where there was nowhere else to go. The trail moved from the wooded area to the open, and finally towards the highway. Unfortunately, the signs quit being helpful after awhile and the trail would end in a T and I no real idea of which way to go. I kept moving towards the highway (or at least where I thought the highway was) because I knew I could find my way to the highway, I could get back to the car. If you blow up the map below, you can see where I did a big loop towards the east side of the trail. I later found that this is actually the route. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to go from being marked well to nothing and dump the rider hundreds of yards from a usable trail. I ended up making some wrong turns and did a fire road loop while the sun was setting and clouds were beginning to form overhead. I did a total of 9 miles for the day and 610 miles on the bike overall. Here are some pics from the day's ride: