Hiking at Menard May Park

Menard-May Park is located in Edgewater in Volusia County. It's just a small city park with a boat ramp and some playground equipment. However its position on the North Indian River makes it a pretty nice start to a brackish water hiking trip.

The nice thing about Menard-May is the number of paddling trails nearby. A kayak is needed to cross over to the paddling trails, but most of the paddling trails just go around an island or 2. It's pretty easy to hike either on the beach or in the water and go around the island.

The navigation channel is only a few hundred feet wide. I took my kayak across and decided to circumnavigate an island and check out the mangrove species.

The main issue I had was the wind. It was blowing from the east at about 20 mph. That left the sediment in the water a little stirred up on even on the leeward side of the island, the side sheltered from the wind. At that point I decided that instead of braving the winds I'd just walk on the leeward side and forget the windy side.

There are 4 types of mangrove in Florida -- red, white, black, and button. I spotted the red and black mangroves on the island. I saw a bush a little back that could have been a white mangrove. I didn't see the button mangrove at all. Although they're all called mangroves my understanding is that the 4 types of mangroves aren't closely related.

Red Mangrove at Menard-May

I liked this picture because you can see both ways that the red mangrove spreads. One is the red branching roots. It gradually spreads in all directions by putting down new roots. Also notice the seed pod hanging above the water. That seed pod drops into the water and floats away looking for some shallow water. The seed pod is also a preferred manatee food. Sometimes you can tell how far manatees can come out of the water by looking at how high the remaining red mangrove seeds are above it.

There was also lots of black mangrove on the island. Black mangrove are the ones that come up from shoots underwater. I was there near high tide so usually these shoots would be sticking out of the water several inches.

Black Mangrove

They also have a small seed pod but I didn't see any. Maybe wrong time of year. You can also tell a black mangrove by licking the leaf. It tastes like salt because the plant sweats out the salt.

There were lots of hermit crabs out and about. I thought this one was interesting as while I was filming one hermit crab a smaller one came over to see what the commotion was about.

I also saw lots of blue crabs. It always startles me when I step a blue crab. The water was cloudy enough that when it was over about 1 foot high I couldn't see where I was putting my feet. Once in a while I would feel a blue crab trapped under my foot. That scared me enough each time that I jumped back when I felt him. I also had one that attacked my camera. The attacks were really fast. I slowed down the attacks to half speed for the video.

I saw a few horseshoe crabs. But they seemed to be only at the ends of the island and the water was too murky there to get a good picture.

Horseshoe crab through the murky water

But overall it was a very nice hike. I went 2 miles in water that ranged from mid-calf to mid-thigh in depth. The footing was very soft in places. I've taken a couple of brackish water hikes recently and really enjoyed them. The wildlife is very different than dry land hikes. I'll probably keep doing these occasionally, especially at Menard-May where there are lots of little islands to wander around.

Kayak trails. Or hiking trails.