Trout lilies bloom in the afternoon, so the guided walks on Friday Valentine's Day would be offered at 2 & 4 pm. Dean and I drove the 3 or so hours and got there at noon. Plenty of time to make the round of the trail by ourselves. Brochures are stored in the mailbox at head of the trail.  

Wow! The photos don't really show the extent of the blooming.

The trout lilies occur on a gentle north-facing slope. In surrounding areas such as just over the ridge where the slope faces south, there are none.

 
It had rained a good bit the day before, so the resurrection ferns were green and the bottom of the slope was wet. I learned later that the bottom lands here are usually only slightly muddy.

       
At 2pm Beth Grant, the tour leader and one of the key players is saving this special area, and 6 others gathered in the parking area for her tour.

Beth showed us the various stages of the trout lily and explained that they don't bloom until they are 5 or 6 years old. Also, no one really knows how old they can get. There were other flowers in bloom including true violets.

 
 Plus there were quite a few spotted wake robins or trilliums. Since the one on the right has four leaves, should it be called a quadrillium? 

 
We saw evidence of animal habitat from holes to mockernut leftovers.

 
Beth showed us some of the invasive privets that are left here in the bottom land (the light green tall shrubs that you can see above and to the left of her hand), but most of them have been removed by a dedicated crew of volunteers. They estimate that the privets have been here for 60 years. 

 
Beth is a great guide pointing out this tiny twayblade orchid that Dean and I had missed even though the sign was right there and several of the plants were marked with pink tape. After about an hour and a half, we headed back to the parking area where Beth handed out flyers for The Lost Creek Forest, another area that she and the other activists are now trying to save from developers.  As the next group gathered for the 4pm tour, Dean and I rolled out and headed west for Falling Waters State Park. We pulled into our campsite at dinner time and settled in for the evening. A front with a rain shower passed through overnight, but the next morning was clear.

We hit the trail to the waterfall at sunrise. This Florida State Park is about an hour west of Tallahassee and is the highest park in the state with a whopping 324' elevation. 

We walked through the wire grass and high pine forest.

The lake was created with a dam to control the water flow over the waterfall. As part of that effort they made it into a swimming hole with a sandy beach.

 
We head down to the observation platform where we see that there is more to this waterfall than expected.

It falls 70' into a narrow rocky sinkhole. We think that the volume of water had been turned back for the night because the photos showed much more water flowing, but still quite remarkable.

There are a lot of other sinkholes in the immediate area. 

  
The trees hang on with the roots they have left, but a large magnolia here had fallen over fairly recently.

As we head back we took the trail less traveled around the other side of the lake. The trail is not well-defined, but it's clear that people do travel this way and it looks like there are some favorite fishing spots around the lake.

As we walked around the ravine with a feeder creek to the lake, we found a freshly-fallen pine. It probably fell last night in the storm--the scent of resin was sharp and the layer under the bark was still sticky. Other denuded trees withstood the winds--many holes have been dug out by birds for shelter.