Day 184-185, Jan 25-26, 2017. Punta Gorda, Fl to South Venice to Bradenton

Our arrival in Punta Gorda turned out to be the beginning of a ten day visit. Our friend Jeanne has a place in an RV resort that has one of the closest and most caring communities I have experienced. Folks would stop you on the street to talk, wonder if they could be of help, ask if you would like to play cards or go kayaking or anything. Ken and Bev, neighbors of Jeanne, even offered to re-arrange their lanai so that we could store our bike there to protect it from a storm we had 1/23-24. We had originally planned to leave 1/23, but rain and 25-35 mph head winds dissuaded us.


Ken and Bev and us


Bev and Jeanne


The sign explains it all.


Banyan tree

I was too distracted by talking with Phyllis and Doug, friends since college to blog last night. I will blog tonight for today and yesterday.

Yesterday we rode to South Venice to stay with our friends Phyllis and Doug. The ride of 1/15 on US-41 from South Venice to Punta Gorda was one that did not deserve to be repeated. Two foot wide shoulder that occasionally disappeared, speed limits as high as 60 mph, lots of traffic, not a fun ride. We both looked for a route to avoid high traffic roads and succeeded. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18571667 Note that FL-776 has side paths or service road for over 90% of its length.


Leaving Punta Gorda, and crossing the Peace River bridge.

 
 Bridge sidewalks can be very narrow.


 Beach at Manasota Key. Lots of shells here.

 
Shells on beach.

Doug and Phyllis welcomed us to their home, and after the mandatory shower, we went out for a lovely fish dinner. Tired arrived soon after we returned, and Margaret and I fell into bed.


Doug and Phyllis


Today's ride also involved several islands. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18689737
The beach at Siesta Key is supposed to be the best beach in the U.S. We had to go see it.




Bridge we crossed from Sarasota to Bird Key


Coming down off the bridge to Bird Key


Lots of this type of draw bridge today

Tomorrow we head to Tampa/St Pete. Good night.

Day 174, Jan 15, 2017. Sarasota to Punta Gorda, Fl

Pretty much all of Florida

A portion of the old rail.

 At the suggestion of Dennis and Jane our Warm Showers hosts, we headed to the Legacy Trail near their home to begin our our trip to Punta Gorda. It is a Rail to Trails project that stretches from Sarasota to Venice, Fl. The whole length is paved, stretching through open countryside until the north side of Venice where is runs along the Inner-coastal Waterway. The Inter-coastal begins in Boston MA and ends in Brownsville, TX. Supposedly there are dolphins and Manatees, in this section, not that we saw any :-)

This was to be a work day: get up early and pedal straight through. It was a plan we made together and then both ignored. After a chatty breakfast we took off. Once on the trail I called a old friend of ours. She had left a message on our blog letting us know she was in Florida and leaving her phone number. It turned out that we were literally pedaling past her condo on our way down the trail. Long story short, we met up.

The old train station has been converted into a way station for
cyclists and a city bus stop.

Phyllis and Doug are old friends from college and young children before careers consumed our lives. they met us on the trail for a ride, many laughs and a wonderful lunch. It was as if no time had passed. We plan to spend a night with them on our way back.

The Peace bridge is a mile and half long bridge that spans the Peace River
just outside of Punta Gorda. 

We still had to get to Punta Gorda. Unfortunately, US41 was our only option. While it has a shoulder to ride on, it's heavily used. It sucks to spend four hours listening to traffic wiz by.  With ten miles to go, a second serendipitous event occurred. A car whizzed by honking its horn and waving. I looked over expecting to get a question about our destination or a "She's not pedaling" comment when I  recognized the driver! I knew Alice was in Florida with her husband Ed, but did not expect to run into her on the highway. We pulled into a parking lot for a chat. It was a welcome break from the noise and stress of US 41.

Eventually we made it to Jeanne's, not the way we planned but there none the less. Like much of this trip, things did not go as planned, they went better.

Day 173, Jan 14, 2017. Sun City Center, FL to Sarasota

Our route for today: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18492944

Really enjoyed our ride today. We started out going west then southwest on US 41. The wind was 10-15 mph from the NE to E; we were windstrong! Even with the necessary fits and starts of beginning a ride, we managed to average over 13.6 mph in the first hour. Route 41 had a nice shoulder for as long as we were on it, and early on, was not too busy.




Bridge over the Little Manatee River


 At about 12 miles into the ride, we passed signs for the Manatee Correctional Facility. Margaret and I were both surprised. Manatee look so gentle, and non-violent, but I suppose there are be a few bad apples to spoil the barrel as it were. It must be an ugly thing when a manatee goes bad.

Martin Luther King Day is a much bigger thing in the south than it is in Michigan. You can speculate as to reasons. When we passed through Palmetto, FL today, we just missed the start of the MLK Day parade, lots of police cars, and people lining the streets. We got to the end of the parade route, stopped at a Subway for lunch (and silently remembered James Lynn, a Big Ride rider who loved Subway), and crossed the bridge into Bradenton.



Sarasota, as you may know, is the headquarters for several major league baseball spring training camps. It is/was also the winter headquarters for the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. Lots of history in this town. We passed facilities for both the Pirates and the Orioles.


Part of the Pirates' organization, I believe.

Tonight we stayed with Warm Showers hosts Jane and Dennis. What fascinating people! At different times in their lives they constructed a log cabin in New Hampshire, living in the drafty 16 by 32 cabin through NH winters, bicycled and hiked extensively, and are both published authors. I am sure that I am leaving out facts and details.

Warm Showers can be a hit or miss affair. Sometimes your hosts are fantastic, sometimes good, sometimes not so much. Our last host lived in a house with failing plumbing, overgrown yard, and casual cleanliness. The one before was very courteous and kind, but only one in the family spoke English. Rarely, and today for only the second time, you meet people that would be your best friends, if only they lived near your home. Jane and Dennis are like that. We talked until 23:30; Margaret never stays up that late.

If anyone cares, the high temperature today was 78F, with mostly sunny skies and reasonable humidity.

Day 172, Jan 13, 2017. Lakeland to Sun City Center, FL

Central Florida has a more lush look to it but the damn Spanish Moss is back.

The water tower outside Publix (a lg supermarket chain) main
 bakery.

T
Today being Friday the 13th, John and I have been having fun blaming it for anything we could. Sprinkling? Cars coming to close? Can't find a spot to stop for lunch? Left our detergent in Cocoa? No ground level room?... damn that curse!

Actually, it was a great trip today. The weather was overcast, but warm and the trip flew by. Yesterday's trip was exhausting for me. I am not sure why. It may have been because each of the tires were 30lbs low on pressure, a fluke or perhaps John wasn't pedaling :-). Whatever the cause, I felt better today.

Florida is one of the largest cattle producing states in the USA.

It is also great to be in a motel tonight, especially one with a laundry room. We spent the last two nights with Warm Shower hosts, while normally enjoyable, the last two were ...interesting. Tomorrow we head to Sarasota and our last Warm Shower host before we arrive in Punta Gorda at our friend, Jeanne's place.

Just when we were about to give up, John caught sight of picnic
pavilions. : )

Day 171, Jan 12, 2017. Kissimmee,FL to Lakeland, FL

Another beautiful day for a ride. Are you getting tired of hearing that? We got an early start, leaving our Warm Showers hosts about 08:00. A little over a mile later, Margaret spied a Denny's; we spent an hour there having a large breakfast. We were riding 58 miles today after all.

Route for today:  https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18382343

I find myself wondering about the history of the places we travel through. About 16 miles into today's ride, we turned onto Old Tampa Highway. This was a narrow road with deteriorating black top overlying red brick. Not a great road. Certainly not a main road.



About a mile in on this road, we came across this.



It says:
"Oct 1930, Welcome to Polk County, Citrus Center"
Looks like there may have been plaques attached in the past, but they appear long gone. What was so important about this little road that it rated a monument like this 86 years ago?

We did see LOTS of citrus groves today, all of them after we passed this point.



We also saw some really tall mangroves. Margaret was wondering if all mangroves were bush like. That was the only kind we saw along the Indian River. Not so much apparently. Notice the knees, the lumpy things coming out of the water near the trunk. They help to supply oxygen to the tree so that it can grow in standing water.

 

We did about nine miles today on rail trails, and saw a dinner plate sized turtle on one of them.



Tomorrow we ride 50 miles to Sun City Center and a motel. We are actually seeing a few hills. Today we had a 2.8% climb, tomorrow one of 2.0%. Yeah, I know, not much. Goodnight.

Day 170, Jan 11, 2017. Cocoa, FL and Kissimmee,FL

We flew into Orlando's Sanford International Airport on Jan. 7th planning to get an Uber to Cocoa. In typical fashion, the plane was late so we did not arrive until 11:45PM. I was concerned that we would have a hard time getting an Uber for the hour drive to Cocoa but we were picked up in 2 minutes! John chatted with the driver the whole way to Nancy and Jim's home, allowing me to "close my eyes" for a minute ...or 60.

It was fun spending time with Jim and Nancy. Beside binge watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, we had many a delicious meal and a lot of good laughs. On the 10th, Jim drove us all down to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. What a great place! We began at the Visitor's Center which was well worth the stop. It has interesting displays and lots of information. We then drove along a 7 mile wildlife viewing path. We were able to spot herons, egrets, pelicans, eagles and my favorite, the roseate spoonbill just to name a few. Roseate springhills look a lot like flamingos, except their bill is flattened out at the end like a spoon. They were also many alligators sunning themselves on the banks. We really lucked out, Jim and Nancy said the last time they went, they did not see any animals at all.

Fun facts: to determine the size of an alligator, estimate the length of its snout in inches, turn the inches into feet and you have the length.
If you are being chased by an alligator, run in a straight line. Fast.  Zig sagging will just slow you down and the gator will cut you off.

Unfortunately, the morning of the 11th arrived and we had to head out to Kissammee. Fortunately, the it was warm and mostly sunny. We were a little concerned about riding 57 miles after taking a month off but we made it just fine. Tomorrow we head to Lakeland, 55 miles away.  By Jan. 15th we should be in Punta Gorda at our friend Jeanne's place.

* For some reason, the program will not upload my pictures. I will add them later.

Day 137, Dec. 9. Edgewater, to Cocoa, FL

Kind of a chill, overcast ride today. US 1 was so busy on our way into Edgewater yesterday, that we decided to try to avoid it entirely. We were able to do that for the first 10 miles today, then we had to be on US 1 for two miles, then off for the rest of the day. That was the plan.

During that first ten miles, we continued to see clean up efforts from Matthew. Since November we have seen truck after truck carrying tree branches and roots and other tree stuff. I wondered what they did with it all; now I know. They take it all out to a wide open field, and put it through a gigantic chipper.








When we got back on Route 1, it was practically deserted. Instead of turning off as planned, we decided to continue on US 1 to Titusville. Unfortunately, traffic got much heavier by the time we were approaching Titusville, so after a quick lunch at KFC, we re-activated Plan A.

You sometimes see the darnedest things on the road


Notice the flag. We had a nice tailwind for the last half of the day.


Looks like snow, but it is little white flowers.

Titusville is across the Indian River from Kennedy Space Center. It was a bit sad, on the day after John Glenn died, to be entering Space Commerce Park on Grissom Parkway. First street after we entered was John Glenn Blvd.

We are staying for a few days in our friends Jim and Nancy's home in Cocoa. They are also letting us store our bike here. We will be flying home 12/15 for Christmas and stuff. We will fly back to Florida the first week after New Year.

We have ridden our bike 83 times, for a little over 275 hours and 3,136 miles. Bike Journal says we burned 196,852 Calories doing it, but I don't feel a whole lot lighter. Our next target city is Punta Gorda, FL, where we plan to visit with friends.

Happy Holidays to all.