During my travels, I’ve been fortunate to see and experience much that is worth sharing.
My hope is that these images touch your hearts, much as the USA’s natural beauty has touched mine.
May the adventurous among you benefit from the travel information I share on these pages!
Late in 2019, I wanted to get myself back into a regimen of taking long hikes up steep, hilly trails. Up till that time, I assumed Florida was simply a huge, flat sandbar — until I recalled an earlier time when I lived in Clermont, in Lake County, which sits on a ridge high enough to view the entire Orlando metro area to the east. And remembering that, I thought it would be fortunate if I could find similar hills in the rural areas of Lake county.
After doing a little “virtual exploring” with Google Earth and consulting Wikipedia, I discovered that Clermont straddles the north end of the Lake Wales Ridge, a narrow but prominent line of hills which continues north past Clermont to Sugarloaf Mountain. Sugarloaf, at an elevation of 312 feet, offers an excellent view over Lake Apopka, and was a popular destination for Florida cyclists long before I lived in Clermont.
The 25 acres of forested land at the right side of this photo will eventually become Minneola Hills Overlook Park. Lake Apopka is visible in the background.
Another 258 acres were originally intended to be left as a natural preserve, but were later “deleted”.
Tree-clearing on most of the former preserve was completed when this photo was taken in 2021; the rest was cleared in 2023.
In Lake County, between Sugarloaf Mountain and Clermont, property investors purchased a couple of dozen square miles of forested, hilly rural land in 2005 . The property had previously been occupied by pine plantations and citrus groves. The developers had requested that their planned community, the “Hills of Minneola”, be annexed by the nearby town of Minneola. As part of that arrangement, 283 acres of hilltop land, on a steep ridge overlooking Lake Apopka, was set aside to be a natural preserve to satisfy environmental requirements.
Real estate investment is often about patience. In this case, a sharp decline in home-building, which began in 2006, forced the original developers to put the project on hold. The next group of investors picked up the ball nearly ten years later, and re-submitted their plans to the Minneola city council. These developers, intent on turning as many acres into cash as they could legally squeak by with, requested that the 283-acre nature preserve be replaced with a 65-acre “regional park”.
Rural Lake County residents reacted quickly, but not quickly enough to prevent four of Minneola’s five city council members from being (ahem) persuaded by the developers that deleting the nature preserve was a good idea. Thus it was, during a final hearing in June 2015, that the city council smiled, nodded, and approved the natural buffer acreage, over the objections of 70 residents who attended the meeting. Developers have played this shell game with zoning officials for decades: They talk the officials into allowing them to bulldoze larger contiguous block of green space, and to meet their “green space” obligations by substituting smaller tracts of undesirable acreage.
During my first few exploratory hikes in November 2019, I observed land-clearing operations happening a half-mile away. I had no clue the site contractor was just getting started... until suddenly, I would find myself returning to a homemade trailhead to discover the site had been bulldozed to the ground — with every shrub, tree, and vine stacked neatly in huge burn piles. I can laugh about it now, of course. Back then, I was not amused! It felt like my timing could not have been worse.
But the experience served a purpose: After the second occasion, I realized ignorance is not bliss, and I started surfing the web. I found out that I was hiking within the former boundaries of the nature preseve. Sadly, I took in the history of the Hills that I’ve just shared above, and I found the updated boundaries of the “future regional park”.
On my next visit to the Hills, aided by Google Maps and my cell phone, I found the borders of the remaining acreage. They were inconspicuously marked with wood stakes labeled “Veg. Buffer”. Once I knew the boundaries of the “safe zone”, my hikes in the Hills were more relaxing. It was a relief to no longer be playing tag with bulldozers! I spent the remainder of the winter visiting the Hills of Minneola as often as possible, to get the lay of the land and explore old trails that hadn’t been overgrown by invasive vines, or blocked by fallen trees.
The highest elevation of the acreage is along its north and west boundary. From there, I could observe how the other 218 acres of trees and wildlife habitat were being scrubbed off the ridge overlooking Ferndale with mechanical efficiency.
At that point, I decided to explore more developed areas closer to home, such as Horizon West Regional Park.
My time in the Hills was rewarding while it lasted, however. It gave me a renewed interest in taking nature photos. Up till that point, I had little interest in Florida as a place to hike or to take in the scenery. Wildlife photographers will find better prospects on established trails in the Ferndale Preserve or the Green Mountain Scenic Byway, both of which border Lake Apopka. However, there were once many songbirds, wildflowers, and butterflies to be found in the Hills of Minneola. I also saw hawks and bald eagles patrolling the skies over the Hills. Less often, I spotted raccoons, wild turkeys, and gopher tortoises.
I’ve copied some of the images from my Florida image gallery here, to share with you what I have seen. It turns out the young people I count as family and friends have never seen the yellow flowers of prickly pear cactus in April and May, even though prickly pear is found in most open fields and pastures “out of town”. And many local grownups have never seen a passionflower; to most of us, “passion flower” is a metaphor for something quite different!
I have yet to see a monarch butterfly in Lake County, but I used to see many queen butterflies, which are just as beautiful, and nearly as large. If you like seeing butterflies which are “trippy”, watching a zebra longwing flit around qualifies. Its distinctive yellow/black striping looks just like “caution” tape—it is, in fact, a signal to birds that it’s dangerous to eat! The longwing caterpillar produces toxins from the plants it eats. When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, those toxins are powerful enough to harm a would-be predator.
As for the 65 forested acres I once hiked in the Hills of Minneola: All but 25 acres on the corner of the ridge are gone.
The developers had set aside a parcel of land near Florida’s Turnpike for a K-8 school in 2019, but yet another land swap occurred afterward—and the south 40 acres of the park was chosen to be the site for the school instead. The remaining 25 acres will someday become “Minneola Hills Overlook Park”. Its location near the school will someday make it a nice natural retreat for local kids, with a mile or two of hiking trails. It may eventually feature an observation tower, located on a hilltop from which I used to look across the Ferndale valley toward Lake Apopka.
Those kids may never know their park is only 9% of the size it could have been. But they don’t need to hear about it from me; I’d much rather help them appreciate Nature.
I do, however, have a few words for their parents and grandparents:
Living in Florida for many years has made it clear that state laws governing development should be reformed. Central Florida still has plenty of forests, wetlands, and wildlife, but more and more of is being displaced. By rights, “green space” acreage minimums for new projects can—and should—be tripled to mitigate those impacts. There’s plenty of land for everyone who needs it, and there’s no need for greed.
Along with green buffers, residential lot sizes can be increased to safely accommodate shade trees and allow families to have decently-sized yards. Since the turn of the century, developers seem to have convinced planning commissions that “high density housing”, with its crammed-tight spacing and dangerously narrow streets, is more sustainable than a more liberal community layout. It is not. True sustainable development is informed by the technology and the environmental data now available to us. It means not doing business as usual.
Developers haven’t just stepped over the line; they’ve trampled it. And yet, they’re not the villians in this melodrama: We are responsible for that. Too few of us have demanded that the Florida legislature make “the line” well-defined, and assign its residents’ needs a higher priority than the desires of corporate developers. Florida’s leaders need to wake up: The state achieved its goal of attracting families and businesses into the state long ago. It’s now time to attend to the needs of those families and businesses. We don’t have deep enough pockets to pay for the negative impacts caused by overdevelopment. Developers wanting to do business here should be told they’ll be expected to make sustainable long-term investments in our communities. We can’t afford any more investors whose motive is to get rich while the getting is good.
I am, obviously, a nature lover, but environmentalism is not my religion. I do believe in good stewardship of our natural resources. Floridians cannot afford to indulge in poor stewardship. I speak as one who was born in northern California. Several decades ago, it was a state that was the envy of all others in the Lower 48. In the 20th century, nearly everyone wanted to move there. But common sense dictates that not everyone can.
Poor stewardship of California’s resources has destroyed much of what I once cherished as a young kid. Few middle-class Americans even consider it livable. As an example: The house my family lived in when I attended first grade in Santa Clara is a modest 3-bedroom suburban bungalow. In June 2024, that house had an assessed value of $2.5 million—about 100 times greater than when I lived in it!
Think about that for a bit. Is it worth it? Obviously not. Can it happen here? If we choose that future...yes.
Floridians will do well to learn by California’s example, and make better use of our water and land.
For example: Residential developers in Florida encourage new homeowners to plant large native trees, even on 40-foot lots with tiny yards, where smaller native trees would suffice. Their motive is to make their plans seem environmentally sound on paper. But, inside of 20 years, their customers (the new homeowners) discover that their Southern live oaks must be cut down or trimmed back at great cost—or face the alternative: Tree damage to houses, driveways, sidewalks, and streets. The latter, unfortunately, happens more often than not. In fact, millions of dollars’ worth of tree damage is caused yearly.
The author attempts to identify a black cherry tree. Photo courtesy of Mike Blank.
We can’t have a healthy economy without private investment and free enterprise, but we also can’t have healthy cities without enforcing common-sense guidelines for new development. Developers are well-educated, and are adept in the business of buying and selling real estate, but they’re unlikely to have learned about social responsibility in business college. Therefore, we must teach them that sustainable is better for local infrastructure, the environment, and the families who will eventually buy homes—while allowing honest businessmen to earn what they deserve for their investments.
In Florida, home buyers have gotten used to the many shortcuts home builders take. By the time those shortcuts result in property damage, the original developers and builders have long gone, leaving the homeowners and their HOAs on the hook financially. Special assessment costs spiral out of control, putting unforeseen burdens on the remaining original “homesteaders” who are at or approaching retirement age by that time.
Most folks know the old saying: “Let the buyer beware”, especially as it applies to home appliances and used cars. A house may be a lifetime investment, so buyers need to exercise even more caution. It’s their money. They can afford to learn how sellers do business.
My hope is not so much that you’ll adopt my opinion. I’d much rather you gather your own facts, and act on your own beliefs.
