I’ve been doing some thinking about why nobody else saw MH during his time at Nobles. If he was staying there surely he left camp to get food a few times. Nobles Camp is 5 miles from the I-75 Rest Area along an elevated double track trail with little shade. So a 10 mile roundtrip, maybe made in the morning, was certainly within MH’s hiking ability when he first arrived at Nobles. But was it worth the effort for only vending machine fare? On the other hand, a trip back up the FT north from Nobles to Boundry Rd, and hiking, or perhaps hitchhiking, to the Seminole Reservation just east of there would seem like no more effort and he would be more likely to find a better supply of food for an extended stay. There’s at least an RV Campground and a convenience store or two. Are there no reports of anyone seeing him there?
It’s hard to believe also that more people didn’t encounter MH at Nobles from May to July if he was indeed there this whole time. Although few, if any, thru hikers would be on the FT then, at least a few more day or overnight hikers passing through seem plausible, such as AC did on June 1-2. So I searched a number of fitness apps to investigate this. These trails are also part of designated segments for trail running and mountain biking in Strava, as well as in Alltrails. More hikers, to the limited extent they use these apps, are on Alltrails. Strava users tend to be more competitive types and so there are more logs of their runs and rides. I found one trail runner (AL) on a Strava leaderboard who ran from I-75 north toward Nobles Camp on July 14 2018 twice in the morning (two round trips, 20 miles total). Unfortunately he took the sharp right turn on the FT and then turned around just past the Nobles Camp turnoff each time, not likely within sight of the camp area. I considered he could have passed MH on the trail but in another forum he stated “0 traffic”, so it seemed unlikely. He likely passed agonizingly close to MH at a critical time. I looked at other types of forums too. One Meetup group, “Let’s Explore S. Florida”, has had some group overnight camping trips from I-75 north in the past but I didn’t see any of these had been held between May and July 2018. Has anyone from the S. Florida area who might be a member of these groups shared info with them about MH?
