From Spanish moss to a mountain climb
We spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s 2021 on the road in the Sprinter, heading south to Florida and finishing with a hike in the mountains of East Tennessee.
🥾 Tomoka State Park, Florida
We camped under live oaks and Spanish moss at Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach, where the Tomoka and Halifax rivers meet. The park protects the site of Nocoroco, a Timucua village, and is home to the Legend of Tomokie statue, a sculpture by Fred Dana Marsh from the 1950s. The legend itself is fiction.
A nature trail of about a mile, according to the sign at the start, winds through the hammock where hardwoods are slowly replacing the pines.
🥾 The Bullen Hollow Trail, Tennessee
On New Year’s Eve we were back in the mountains at a trailhead in the Cherokee National Forest in Greene County, Tennessee, where three trails start: Phillips Hollow, Margarette Falls and Bullen Hollow. We took Bullen Hollow, which the kiosk describes as a 2.7-mile trail with a steep climb of almost 1,000 feet, with sections that skirt a rock cliff. It is open to hikers, horses and mountain bikes.
The creek by the trailhead was running full, with small waterfalls and cascades tumbling over mossy rocks in the bare winter woods.
🥾 Trail facts
- Tomoka State Park: Ormond Beach, Florida; day use $5 per vehicle ($4 single occupant)
- Bullen Hollow Trail #2: 2.7 miles with a steep climb of almost 1,000 feet; shared with horses and mountain bikes (trailhead kiosk)
- Also from the same trailhead: Margarette Falls Trail #189 to a 50 to 60-foot fan-shaped falls (sources differ), and Phillips Hollow Trail #17, 1.6 miles with 2,000+ feet of climbing
- Managed by: USDA Forest Service, Unaka Ranger District, Cherokee National Forest
Trail facts checked October 2026. Sources: Florida State Parks: Tomoka, USFS: Margarette Falls hike, TEHCC: Margarette Falls. Tomoka history details are from secondary sources. Trails and roads change, so check with the managing agency before you go.
