I recently agreed to meet family members in Daytona Beach, Fla., for a mini-reunion during the week prior to the Daytona 500. Neither the time nor location was my preference, but since I live in Orlando, it wasn’t exactly a huge sacrifice to drive an hour on I-4 in the interest of family harmony.

Despite the trip being all about togetherness, I found myself with some time on my own, and since I’m not a NASCAR fan and the weather was cool and I hadn’t had a chance to go hiking in months, I chose to explore a 6.8-mile trail stretching from Bulow Creek State Park in northern Volusia County to Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park near Bunnell in southern Flagler County.

I started at the park’s Fairchild Oak Trailhead, named for the remarkable Fairchild Oak.  This mammoth tree with its gnarled branches festooned in Spanish moss is quite a landmark. I’ve seen live oaks before that were so ancient that their spreading branches sagged under their own weight and nearly touched the ground, but this one had limbs that had actually grown into the ground. A plaque at its base claims the tree is 2,000 years old, but a state park sign nearby amends that figure to 300-500 years. Not quite two millennia but still impressive.

The crumbling coquina walls and chimney of a house stands fenced off near the spot where the Fairchild Oak Trail begins, and a sign explains that this was the land sales office for a company that attempted to develop the area back in 1915. Thankfully they failed.

The classic Old Florida landscape preserved in the two state parks is beautiful, some of the prettiest scenery I’ve seen in the Sunshine State. Although the winter canopy was somewhat denuded when I was there in early February, the reduced foliage still provided some shade. Closer to the ground, the spiky fans of palmetto fronds glowed green in the sunlight.

The trail passes through hardwood hammock (imagine crooked branches draped in Spanish moss), crosses a marshy creek via a small bridge, meanders through a slash pine forest, follows Cisco Ditch (much prettier than the name suggests) and briefly skirts the banks of Bulow Creek, a broad area of marsh grass bordered by sabal palms with only a thin ribbon of open water visible.

I chose to start the trail at the Fairchild Oak end so I’d have the plantation ruins to look forward to. I wasn’t disappointed. While the only thing remaining of the plantation house is its foundation—marked by four white posts and a sign—the plantation’s sugar mill survives as a picturesque ruin in the forest. Coquina rock walls, a series of arched door lintels and a soaring central chimney call to mind an Old World castle, and signs explain the purpose of the mill’s various structures. One wall preserves the date of construction: Jan. 26, 1831, the same year naturalist John James Audubon visited “Bulow Ville,” as the plantation was called. Seminole Indians burned the plantation 5 years later, but by that time it had already been abandoned.

I ate my brownbag lunch at one of the picnic tables overlooking the creek near the canoe rentals before making the nearly 7-mile return trip, which I was able to shorten to 6 miles thanks to the shortcut provided by the Pine Hammock Trail. Winter seems like an ideal time to visit the two state parks; I imagined this marshy area would be infested with mosquitoes in summer. Also, short sections of the trail were damp even in the midst of the dry season and would most likely be impassible during periods of heavy rain.

Now, regarding the animals I encountered : As an outdoorsman I’ll admit I’m somewhat less than intrepid. When I read that rattlesnakes and copperheads inhabit these parts, I couldn’t get the image of my foot stepping on a coiled snake out of my mind. My preoccupation with serpents lasted until I crossed a two-lane blacktop (Walter Boardman Lane) around mile two where I met a guy putting his bike in the bed of a pickup. He struck up a conversation and suggested I find a stick in case I ran across a wild hog.

Say what?

He told me a guy he knew had been charged by one recently.

Great. From that moment on every wind-stirred bush concealed a rampaging hog ready to maul or gore or fricassee me or whatever wild hogs do to hikers.

So distracted by a new fear of hogs and clutching a tree branch that I could make whistle through the air like a whip, I proceeded. Not a half mile later I heard a loud rustling in the brush next to the trail and froze. I stared into the scrub, preparing to sprint back the way I had come. Then I saw it—a small armadillo poking his head under dry palmetto fronds. What a relief! I took a picture and moved on.

A few minutes later I heard another loud rustling and stopped in my tracks again, heart pounding. I saw another armadillo, sighed and took a picture. Like any Floridian I’m used to seeing armadillos smashed to bloody smithereens on the roadside. Witnessing a living, whole armadillo seemed a rare thing indeed.

The situation repeated itself again and again: noises followed by the appearance of an armadillo rooting around, at which point I’d compulsively snap a photo. By armadillo number nine I was bored and my camera was in my backpack. I started hoping for a wild hog, or at least a not-quite-tame one. Ten armadillos. Eleven armadillos. Twelve. Thirteen. All told, I counted 18 armadillos in 13 miles.

Interesting armadillo behaviors I observed: one little guy dashed for about 20 feet (who knew they could move so fast?) and pounced like a cat on something I couldn’t see in the leaf litter (a lizard or large bug?). Another confronted me in the middle of the trail, reared up on its hind legs, looked me over, sniffed the air with its pink, wormy snout, and returned to foraging. Obviously it didn’t see me as a threat, which was a little insulting. I mean, I’d like to think I’m imposing, at least in the eyes of small forest critters. And I was carrying a stick.

The closest thing to a snake—venomous or otherwise—that I saw was a sort of snakelike tree root that made me jump when I first glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye. And while I saw torn up patches of earth, which I took to be possible signs of wild hog activity, I didn’t see any flesh-and-blood hogs. My non-armadillo wildlife sightings were limited to squirrels and various birds, including a trio of screeching hawks (they might have been peregrine falcons) circling overhead. As I reached my car at trail’s end, I said a silent thank you to Florida’s fauna for not living up to my paranoid fears. I also took comfort in knowing that even if I had encountered a wild hog and it had charged me, it probably would have tripped over an armadillo.