The Amtrak station also has rest rooms as well as a small railroad museum inside. There is also some fast food and a gas station convenience store in East Palatka as well as a small parking lot. There is good parking, restrooms and bottle filling stations at the Vermont Heights, Armstrong and Cora C. The trail will take you to the northwest side of town, but I usually turn around at the Amtrak station. The trail winds along some streets of East Palatka, then over the bridge to Palatka proper. Just east of Hastings, is a farm complex that has a couple long horn cattle in a field as well as an old train station, caboose and locomotive that were apparently a museum at one time. The trail also goes through Hastings that has some interesting buildings. The vast majority of the rest of the trail is shaded and runs through some wild areas, some wooded back yards and across a few streams. There's not much shade, but there are nice views of farm fields. It can be a bit noisy and the traffic is moderate. A couple of long chunks of trail are along route 207, but the trail has it's own right of way, separated from the road by 30 feet or so. The trail is nearly "calibrate you level" flat the whole way except for the bridge over the St. Augustine end and the Amtrak station in Palatka. I have ridden this trail several times between the trail end at the St. It's a shame because the routes of many of our trails pass through some very scenic, serene and secluded wooded areas. We'll usually pick it up where we can easily get to it, but refuse to go tramping off into the woods to retrieve it.
Trash is starting to appear along side the pavement - the same stuff there day after day. Recent rains have vegetation growing across the trail. Much of the the wood fencing is rotting, tipping and starting to fall over. On this particular trail, the asphalt is severely cracking and separating in numerous areas. And at the risk of appearing to want to pile on, the management of Volusia County parks needs to also be taken to task for the lack of maintenance of all the county trails, many of which, while relatively new, are starting to show the effects of weather and aging. It was at this point we simply vowed that enough was enough and to never come back. And these are fairly frequent occurrences on this trail. So - one speeding e-bike coming towards us three e-trikes squeezing between us in the middle and us in line hugging the right side. The trailer in this line had to veer sharply right immediately as he got right next to us to avoid a collision, causing us to have to check up quickly. In the second case, there were three e-trikes in a line squeezing between us and a fast approaching e-bike. In the first case, there was one e-bike and one person-powered bike in line. In both cases, motorized units were approaching us unannounced from the rear, and they proceeded to "Thread the Needle" between us and oncoming traffic. Two instances today in fairly rapid succession convinced us to not ever go back. But the lack of any posted rules for shared-trail usage, and the lack of any posted etiquette pointers simply make it unenjoyable for us. Since it's only a half mile from our home, we hoped we could make it work for us. We regularly walk on this trail - I should say we USED to regularly walk this trail, because we won't be going back. Today was a prime example of why this mixing should not be allowed, or at least needs to be strictly controlled. Signage is very clear in prohibiting motorized vehicles, yet they're out there in droves. I wrote a critical review of this trail two months ago due to dangers posed mostly by motorized bikes/trikes mixing in with non-motorized traffic on a very hilly and often sight-restricted segment of this trail.
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