DID WE MAKE IT????

YES WE DID!!!!  At approximately 11:00 a.m. EST on Day 64 (Saturday, November 17, 2012), we dipped the wheel into the Atlantic Ocean at Anatasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL.  

Yesterday (Friday), our friends Dennis & Lyndsey met up with us again about 20 miles east of Alachua on the outskirts of Gainesville and lightened our load by taking the trailer and gear.  (They were in their minivan this time, not on the Spyder).  That was such a shot in the arm and we were able to scoot along about 5 mph faster than with the trailer.   We rode county roads 241, 232, and 222 into Gainesville, then state route 26 out to Melrose and Putnam Hall, then 100/17 to East Palatka.

We stopped in Melrose for lunch where D&L had scouted out a fantastic restaurant – The Blue Water Bay Restaurant.  Melrose is a small town and it was amazing to find a restaurant of this quality.  Lots of fresh seafood, white tablecloths, and excellent service.  After lunch it was on to East Palatka and a very nice Best Western and another great meal at Musselwhite’s restaurant next door.  At that point we could almost smell the ocean, just 32 miles away.  

In Palatka, we crossed paths again with the ACA group.  We had heard at the Waffle House in Alachua that the group had been there the day before, so we thought they probably were already finished with the ride.  But they had stopped for the night in Gainesville on Thursday.

 

This morning we woke up jazzed to think this was our last day of this quest.  Rick checked weather as he usually does and informed me that the forecast was for a 70% chance of rain, winds from the NE at 20 mph with gusts to 30, and a coastal flood warning.   I thought he was joking as he tends to do from time to time to see if he can get me riled up.  He was NOT joking.  Just off the coast of St. Augustine the radar showed a nasty little storm cell.  Oh boy, we’ve had really pretty great weather this trip.  What a forecast for the last day!! 

The ACA route to St. Augustine was 40 miles and skirted north up along the St. John’s river for awhile before turning east on county road 214.  However, we missed our first left turn to get on that route and ended up on CR 207 which goes northeast.  It was a four-lane road with a good shoulder and traffic fairly light as it was Saturday morning.  We decided to just stay on 207 which was the most direct route into St. Augustine.  At Hastings, we crossed paths with Ed, Arthur, Rick, and Greg from the ACA group.  They had decided to go this same route also to try to beat the weather.  A few miles farther along, we came across  John and Berit from the ACA group who were making a left turn to rejoin the regular route.

We somehow managed to get to St. Augustine without getting rained on!!  We did have a 15 mph headwind with some gusts up to 25 or more, but without the trailer, we still managed to make decent time.  At one point there was a bike path that paralleled CR 207 and trees sheltered us from the wind – that was really nice for a brief time.

Arriving in St. Augustine – what a beautiful city!!  And a very watery city!!!  There were several places where high water from the inter-coastal waterway had washed up on the road and we had to ride through some spots of 6-8” of water (we went around some places where the water was a foot deep or more!).  We managed to get through this and the traffic and make it into Anastasia State Park, savoring the last mile out to the beach.    Tears of joy?  Nah, I did that last night realizing that unless somebody knocked us off the bike today, we would make it.  

AND WE DID!

Day 63

Total miles:  66.3

Time:  4:11

Avg:  15.85 mph

Day 64

Total miles:  32.95

Time:  2:15

Avg:  14.64 mph

The Last Mile

Ed in Palatka, FL

St. Augustine, Flagler College

The Last Mile

A glimpse of the Atlantic

THE FINISH!

Day 62: King of the Road!!!

Spanish Moss on Oak Tree near Suwannee River, Florida

Trailer for sale or rent 
Rooms to let fifty cents
No phone no pool no pets 
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah but, two hours of pushing broom 
Buys a eight by twelve four bit room
I'm a man of means by no means 
King of the road

-Roger Miller

It's funny how when you're riding along certain songs come into your head.  In this case we passed by a lot with a sign, "Trailers for Rent".  So we started singing this song.

Kings of the Road -- that was us today.  Great day.  We got a fairly early start out of Madison (8:15 am after another great Waffle House breakfast) and headed out south on highway 53.  We wove our way through various county roads through pine "plantations", through a little town of OBrien and eventually ended up paralleling US 129 on the Suwanee River Greenway bike trail through the town of Branford, , the onto US 27 just past the Ichetucknee State Park into Ft. White, then High Springs, FL.

Florida, as Texas, continues to surprise me with what it includes.  Not all beaches, palm trees and pink flamingos   Today we saw huge pine "plantations" -- great expanses of deliberately planted pine trees that are grown to feed the pulp mills of the south.  It was pretty strange seeing pine trees growing in perfectly spaced rows, then every so often, a big area that had been harvested and was totally barren with sandy soil exposed.  How do they even grow anything in that sand?

We also saw (and smelled) dairy farms, cattle and chicken ranches.  The chicken ranches were right out of "Food Inc"  -- big barns that smelled of chicken shit, sounds of chickens, but no chickens in sight.  They're just in those barns eating grain and waiting to be slaughtered.  We also saw a huge cotton field today, as big as any we saw back west.  We crossed several rivers including the Suwanee ("way down upon the Suwanee River") and the Ichetucknee.

As we were passing through High Springs today about 3:10 p.m., all of the sudden Rick veered sharply to the side of the road and stopped.  He had spied.....yes....a DIVE BAR.  No really, it was a bar called The Dive, flanked by plastic pink flamingos   A must stop.  We enjoyed some chips and queso and beer  before we finished our final 8 miles into Alachua FL, a suburb of Gainesville, on highway 441.

Total miles today:  83.11
Time:  5:40
Avg:  14.67

Tomorrow we will push on to East Palatka.  After that, it's St. Augustine and the culmination of this "quest".  It's hard to believe it's just a couple of days away!

At Dan & Amy's house, Tallahassee, FL

Day 61: Florida on My Mind....

Florida, Florida
The whole day through
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Florida on my mind....

-Ray Charles

OK, I know you're thinking something is wrong here....yes, the song IS actually GEORGIA.  However, today we passed through Greenville, Florida which claims R.C. Robinson, "Ray Charles" as a native son.  Ray was actually born in Albany, Georgia but his family moved when he was an infant, to Greenville, FL and that's where he grew up.

Memorial to Ray Charles in Greenville, FL

Park in Greenville where the memorial stands

We started out early this morning after a nice breakfast with Dan and Amy.  Dan has a friend who roasts fantastic coffee beans and Amy and I discovered we are both Pumpkin Spice fanatics.  Dan gave us great directions to get back on our way and onto Monticello then Madison.  THANKS AGAIN DAN & AMY!!!!

We stopped in Monticello for a "second breakfast" about 10:30 a.m. at the Tupelo Cafe.  It was very yummy (oooh, the spinach/tomato/feta quiche!!).    Monticello was a cute little place with a nice town square...

Monticello, Florida

From Monticello we rode highway 90 out to Madison, then highway 53 towards I-10 to get to a motel for the night.

The ride today was quite chilly -- maybe it got to 60 degrees today -- and it was overcast and damp all day.  It rained too -- but luckily we didn't get into it as we were sitting in the Tupelo Cafe having our second breakfast when it must've come down as the road was wet when we left there.

We are still riding through a thickly forested area of Florida.  With the gray skies today,  I particularly noticed the massive oak trees, with ghostly gray/green shrouds of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs almost to the ground in some cases.   Quite a beautiful and eerie site.

Tomorrow we are planning to go off the ACA route (because we had to get off route for a motel) and shake our tail feathers (another Ray Charles song!) to High Springs (probably a 72 mile day).  Hopefully the Google Bike Map is good for us again as it was in Mississippi!!

Today's mileage:  62.08
Time:  4:34
Avg:  13.59 mph

Day 60: "REST DAY"

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

We decided to go ahead and take a rest day in Tallahassee today.  Our "rest day" consisted of a leisurely ride from Midway to the west side of Tallahassee in the morning, a little shopping at Wally World, then into the bowels of the city for a visit to the local bike shop and lunch.

We had broken two spokes on one of the trailer wheels, Rick needed new gloves (his were stinky and shot), a new front tire, and tube.  The first bike shop we visited, University Cycles, was obscured by road construction so we had to ride around in circles a few times before we finally found it's side door entrance.  They were very helpful with almost everything but couldn't do anything about the spokes.  They gave us directions to another shop, Joe's Bikes, and also to MoMo's Pizza.  As it was after 1 pm, we opted to go to lunch first.  That was the BIGGEST medium size pizza I've ever had.  We couldn't possibly eat it all, so we wrapped up the leftover and took it to Joe's Bikes -- they really appreciated it and used it as partial payment for the spokes they had to hand-cut and fit for us.  But we got all fixed up.  We had left our trailer at University Cycles so we could navigate the downtown area unencumbered, so at 3:50 p.m. we headed back there, in a bit of city traffic.  At University Cycles, with trailer hitched up again, we met up with Dan (Warmshower's host) who treated us to a guided 15 mile tour back to his and wife Amy's home on the east side of Tallahassee.  So, on our "rest day", we actually had the following mileage:

Miles:  34.64
Time:  2:43
Avg:  12.75 mph

We had a great visit with Dan and Amy.  They have a lovely home and Amy is a fantastic cook!  She spoiled us with home-made spinach-cheese lasagna rolls, home-made garlic-parmesan break sticks, salad, and for dessert, pumpkin-spice cake roll with cream cheese filling (also home-made, of course!!).  They have done a bit of touring themselves and are looking forward to doing more, but alas, they still have (four-letter word) JOBS, so they are limited to vacation-type touring for now (7-10 days).  We all got along very well and hopefully we'll see them again sometime, perhaps taking a tour of Utah or the Pacific Coast someday.  Dan and Amy, if you are reading this, THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN!!!

Day 59: FINF

Today we rode from Marianna towards Tallahassee FL on highway 90, then took county roads 269, 269A, and 268 into Midway (just west of Tallahassee).  The morning started out really nice with Dennis & Lyndsey buying our breakfast at Waffle House.  (I just LOVE that place.  Now I've discovered their cheesy eggs and grits breakfast!!).  Then D&L took off on their new CanAm Spyder (see photo) and headed off on their 300+ mile journey back home to The Villages, FL.

Also, D&L took some really nice photos of us along our route yesterday....(thank you!!  These are rare because usually it's just Rick and I by ourselves so it's hard to get those photos together, especially in action on the bike)....

Along our route today as we were passing through Grand Ridge, we saw another cross-country cyclist going the opposite direction.  SHE was walking her bike.  We stopped to see if she needed assistance and were pleased to meet Elif, a woman from Istanbul, Turkey who has come over to the US to ride cross country.  She started in Orlando and is riding to Texas, then heading down into Mexico.  ALONE!!!!  She had full panniers and a really great attitude and seemed to just be enjoying and taking her time.  She was telling us that she had made some friends in Mexico and they told her where the safe border crossings were, but advised her that once she left their homes, she'd be better off taking buses through Mexico for awhile.  I just can't fathom doing something like that -- especially not alone.  Good on her -- I hope she stays safe!

So we didn't make it all the way to Tallahassee today.  After crossing the Apalachicola River we went into the Eastern time zone and therefore, lost an hour.   We were hoping to get all the way to the east side of Tallahassee where we had contacted Warmshowers hosts, Dan & Amy.  As it was, we rolled into Midway close to 4 p.m. and were both very tired.  So we checked into a motel and plan to take a leisurely ride into Tallahassee tomorrow, meet up with Dan after he gets off work, and stay with he and Amy tomorrow evening.  We were both feeling pretty tired today after six days of riding 58-68 miles a day so tomorrow's break will be really great and set us up for a good finish into St. Augustine, now anticipated for Sunday, the 18th.

Today I decided to start counting plastic pink flamingos that I see in people's yards.  Todays' count was only 2.  There were the usual lids and gloves along the roadside.

FINF????  Oh, that means "Florida Is Not Flat".  People keep telling us it's all flat in Florida but today we went up and down rollers pretty much all day.  We both thought there was something wrong with our trailer because it seemed heavier than usual.  I think we need a rest day....

Day 58: Veteran's Day

Today I had the privilege of riding through a Veteran's Day parade with a veteran (Rick) who was wearing an "Americana" bicycle jersey.  People would've thought we were part of the parade IF we had been going the same way as they.  As it was, we were going opposite.  The nice thing was that the police let us go through even though they stopped and detoured all the cars.  (This was about 3:00 p.m. as we were going through Marianna, FL on highway 90).

So....today I learned (1) that Florida is not all flat, and (2) Florida is not all palm trees and flamingos   We did see 1 flamingo -- it was plastic and stuck on somebody's front yard.  On today's roadside we saw a PAIR of gloves, a flip flop, several baby diapers, and a raghead mop!!  (That was a first.)

Dennis & Lyndsey tagged along off and on ,taking photos of us on the bike, and checking out the lunch stop in Chipley (Surf & Turf, good food, everybody was there after Sunday services) and the motel in Marianna.  Thankfully they steered us away from the ACA recommended places (didn't look so good) and we went a few miles off route to stay at a nice Super 8 with a Walmart across the street and several restaurants within walking distance.  The funny/interesting thing was....when WE (Rick & I) rode through Marianna, we stopped at Winn-Dixie to get snacks and beer and wine; we bought a bottle for Dennis & Lyndsey too.  After this, Rick informed me that Dennis had told him there was a WalMart across the street from the Super 8 where we would be staying.  I thought, "Well, we could've stopped there."  However,  I have gotten to a place in my mind where I think, "get it when you can get it!".  And this proved a good thing today.  Because it was Sunday.  AND because in this county, on Sunday, no stores or restaurants can serve alcohol EXCEPT Winn-Dixie!!!!  Figure that!  I was really glad I bought a bottle of wine just for Dennis & Lyndsey!!!

So...this part of Florida....it is beautiful, but it's not beaches and flamingos   It's piney woods and swamps.  I kept looking for alligators today but didn't see any.  It IS very pretty.  Someone at the Waffle House where we had breakfast this morning commented that the part of Florida we were going to be riding through was like the "old Florida".  I think I understand this-- the beautiful lush land that isn't overwhelmed with stores and condos and people.  If it wasn't overwhelmingly humid and hot in the summers it could be a great place to live.

Day 57: Fat Lighter

Good ride today (Milton to DeFuniak Springs, FL)-- good weather, some beautiful country roads with some rises in them (Florida hill country, ha, ha.)  Not all of Florida is palm trees and beaches; this part is through skinny pine forests that are used to feed the paper mill industry down in this part of the country.  Later we had a nice 30 mile stretch on highway 90 with a shoulder and pretty smooth surface.  We called this highway the "Craig's List Highway" due to the many yard sales along the side of the road (not at actual houses; people just come out and set up on the roadside.)  I learned something new today -- what a "fat lighter" is.  It is the heartwood of pine trees that is impregnated with resin and therefore, is an excellent source of getting a fire started.  (One of the yard sales had "fat lighters" for sale; at first I was trying to imagine a very fat cigarette lighter type of device....)

We arrived in DeFuniak Springs about 2:30 p.m. and navigated our way to Beef O'Grady's Family Sports Pub where we enjoyed a few beverages and appetizers with Dennis & Lyndsey Morris who had ridden their new CamAm Spyder over to tag along with us for a day or so.  Tonight we are starting at another Regency Inn & Suites, a basic, clean, economy motel.  Tomorrow we will head out to Marianna continuing on highway 90.

Total miles:  68.42
Time:  5:03
Avg:  13.55 mph