Day 190 Jan 31, 2017. Zephyrhills to Dunnellon, FL

Yet another beautiful Florida water scene.

 The trail reminded us of Michigan except the palm trees and

 mangroves : )

 John and I have been looking forward to today's ride because we knew most of it would be spent on the Withlacoochee rail trail. Much of the riding we have done in the last several weeks has been on busy state highways. While most of them have had bike lanes, the roar of the traffic wears on you after a while.

Trailside Bike shop - sells recumbents and trikes exclusively. Looking at their
website, it appears they sponsor a lot of group rides. One logical explanation
for thr number of trikes on the trail.

Of the 60 mile we road today, more than 40 was on the trail. As an added bonus, there were very few road crossings. We made excellent time.



At first we were surprised at the amount of traffic on the trail, but in the land of the retiree, there is no "week day" so we shouldn't have been. We passed tens of cyclists, many of whom were on recumbent trikes. Florida is definitely the land of the recumbent, which makes sense given the fact that recumbents tend to be easier on the body than uprights but trikes are still relatively scarce. Again, it is logical given the aging population in Florida, but this was our first encounter with trikes in this volume.

Maybe we'll take a break elsewhere.

Signs of spring?

Mile posts left over from the days
when this was a working railroad.

.

We planned to stop for lunch at the Inverness McDonald's but I missed the turn. Instead of turning around, I routed us through town to back track. Luckily, we passed the Little Italy Delicatessen and decided to stop there instead. What a find! It is run by an Italian couple who could not have been nicer. The food was great. A definite upgrade from McDonald's.




We arrived in Dunnellon, FL around 3PM, showered and headed out to dinner. The dusk is still pretty early, so there was not much time for anything else. Dunnellon survives on tourism and has a number of ecotours and kayaking opportunities. Folks come from all around to kayak the Withlacoochee River. It has an abundance of wildlife I would love to see, however it's winter here and much of the wildlife has left for warmer environments. In the end, we decided to keep on keeping on and head to Cross City tomorrow.