Hiking Cedar Key

Location: Cedar Key, Fl
Date: 3/16/2013
When spending the weekend camping in Cedar Key, Julie and I rode our bikes around the island trying to find a few places to hike and take some nature photos. Maybe classifying what we found as “hiking” would be a stretch as the longest trail we found was a little over a half a mile, so maybe I should call it some nice “walks” through the woods and marshes around the island.
The first place we found was about a half mile from the campground. This trail, called the Railroad Trestle Trail” followed the old railroad line and dead ended at one of the many channels that cut through the island. They did a very nice job with this trail as they had information posted along the way listing all the native plants that are native to this area.


This is all the remains of the old railroad bridge that used to cross the channel.



The second trail that we found was called the “Cemetery Point Trail, which kind of makes sense as it is located right next to the Cedar Key cemetery. The majority of this trail was on an elevated boardwalk that made its’ way through the salt marsh and ended at a point of land where there way a nice playground for kids and a series of workout stations. This was a great place to check out the local birds and they were plentiful in and around the wetlands that border this park.

The boardwalk that leads through the salt marshes.

Below are some of the bird pictures I took wild walking this relatively short trail.




There was a lot of Osprey activity in this area (actually all over Cedar Key). They were very vocal and seemed like a little competition between some of them for this nest. We stopped and watched them for awhile and they put on quit a show,



The last trail that we found was the Whitman Trail at the Cedar Key Museum State Park. This is a nice little park that houses a museum showing the history of Cedar Key, an old homestead of the Whitman family, and a short trail out to the bay and though the tall pines that grow in this area. 

This is the Whitman home that was moved to this park and reconstructed,

This osprey had some “issues” and screeched the entire time we walked this trail. We weren’t sure what the problem was, but he (she?) sure did make a racket. 



This was a display on the trail that showed some of the wildlife that inhabit the area.

Here are the GPS tracks for the three “hikes” that we did while visiting Cedar Key.
Cedar Key Trestle Trail at EveryTrail

Cemetery Point Trail at EveryTrail
Cedar Key Museum State Park - Whitman Trail at EveryTrail