Day 197 Feb 7, 2017. Talllahassee to Snead, FL

We had a pretty good ride today. There is something nice about arriving at your motel totally dry, and a couple hours later witnessing severe thunderstorms from the warmth and safety of your comfortable room. Even better, the storms will be done by the wee hours of the morning, and won't begin again until after 5 PM, but I get ahead of myself.

Our route for the day: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18832423

We exited Tallahassee on W. Gaines St., riding by the south side of Florida State University. We passed a bike shop, and decided to wait the ten minutes until it opened, in hopes of getting our rear derailleur adjusted. What a great bike shop! They made the adjustment, charged less than $9, and we had a great time talking with them for over 30 minutes. If you need a shop in Tallahassee, this is where to go.


Off campus student apartments on Gaines St.


University Cycles of Tallahassee.

We stayed off of US-90 for most of the day, riding on rural county roads instead. This resulted in a couple more hundred feet of climbing, but was much more pleasant overall.

 

 

 
Our usual crowds were in attendance.

 At mile 47.4 (45.4 on the map, but I had made a wrong turn earlier in the day that gained us two "bonus miles."), we started our last and steepest climb of the day into Chattahoochee. This is the home of Florida's last remaining mental hospital. We were too busy climbing to take a picture on the way up, but did stop and snap one before starting our descent to cross the Apalachicola River.

 

 
 Yikes. Notice the bad pavement on the shoulder just before the bridge, and the debris further up. 

 
The Apalachicola River, Jim Woodruff Damn, and Lake Seminole beyond.

Finally, as we crossed the Apalachicola we entered the Central time zone. First time we have changed time zones on our trip.

Tomorrow promises nine less miles, and 800 feet less climbing. Should be a great day.

Day 194 Feb 4, 2017. Talllahassee

Wilma, the electric tour cart.

Having limited time in Tallahassee, John and I contacted the Loop Tour company for tour of the downtown. Beth our guide, was entertaining as well as informative as she took us through all the downtown neighborhoods in her electric tour cart. 

Tallahassee is the capital of Florida and home to three universities: Florida State, which, at one time was a women's college, Florida A&M University, a historically black college and Tallahassee Community College. As we road through the student housing, it looked suspiciously like there had been a party there last night. I suspect it had something to do with the 51st Super Bowl. 

Our lovely guide, Beth.

Being the capital, there are also 30 state agency buildings downtown. The state legislature, Governor's Mansion and Supreme Court to name a few. Additionally, there are a large number of law offices and lobbying firms of trade organizations and professional associations there. All this to be close to the new multi-million dollar State House and Senate which only meets two months a year! 

After the tour, we decided to visit the Florida History Museum located in the lower level of the State Building. We picked up a self guided tour set, but it was not needed. The Museum is laid out very well and the write-ups next to each exhibit were well thought out. We thought it would be a quick trip, but we ended up being in there for 2 hours. There were a wide variety of types of exhibits, a number of which were interactive. After completing the What Native Tribe Would You Belong Too? we discovered that John would be an Apalachee and I a Calusa. 

The first RV's called Tin Can Tourism. They were a response
to the high cost of lodging and food when visiting Florida. The
people were called Tin Can Tourists because folks carried tin
cans of food so they would not have to eat out. In the
beginning, state parks allowed these folks to stay for free
to promote tourism.

We have a uniform just like this in
Grand Rapids. John wore it when
he was in the navy.

Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera. Again, John had/has one

of these. He may still if it wasn't sold in the garage sale :) 

Tomorrow we head out toward Pensacola and our first day with significant climbing in over a month. Wish us luck!

Day 193 Feb 3, 2017. Perry to Tallahassee, FL

Today was a head wind day for the first 40 miles. Not a terrible thing, you just have to accommodate to lower speeds for the same level of effort. The first 40 miles were also flat, highway miles. We turned left out of our hotel onto U.S.-98 and stayed on it until lunch.

Today's route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18814158



At around mile 25 we crossed the Aucilla River. and the Aucilla Wildlife Management Area.



Good fishing too.

We rode past swampy areas for a while. Margaret was hoping for an alligator sighting

See the alligator? Me neither.

At mile 39.3 we had lunch at Ouzts' Too Oyster Bar and Grill. What a great place! If you are ever in the area, go and eat here.



Remember, you can click on pictures to make them bigger.

Four miles after lunch we got on the Tallahassee - St Marks rail trail. Ten miles of quiet riding.








The rail trail, as its name suggests, ended in Tallahassee, so we went from quiet trail to urban riding. Urban riding with hills! At any rate, we arrived at our motel by 16:30. We will be exploring Tallahassee (and I will be enjoying the Super Bowl) until we ride out on Tuesday morning, 2/7.

Day 192 Feb 2, 2017. Cross City to Perry, FL

Route 19 early in the day.

The Royal Inn

The 45 mile ride from Cross City to Perry was a breeze. Flat as a pancake with a bike lane all the way. Basically, we turned left leaving the hotel onto Route 19, rode for 45 miles and turned right into the parking lot of the Royal Inn Motel in the little town of Perry.











While at the motel we were lucky enough to hook up with our friend, Nan and Scott. They too are traveling America, at least the warm parts :). They came buy for a quick visit. The motel owner was gracious enough let them park their Winnebago in the lot while we walked to a local Mexican restaurant. Since they had plans for later, John and I hit the hay early. Tomorrow's ride into Tallahassee would be our 5th riding day in a row and being 60 miles, it might be a long one.

Route 19 late in the day. Looks just like all the time in between : )

Day 191 Feb 1, 2017. Dunnellon to Cross City, FL

Absolutely horrible internet access yesterday. If I could have blogged, I would have said the following:

Can you say, "Flat?" In 62 miles we only climbed 308 feet, but more on that later. Today's road was also straight, as in over 30 miles of straight road. Today's route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18784420


Straight.


Straight.

Early in the day, we went through a state forest preserve that had us turning and twisting for a while. I didn't realize that Johann Wolfgang had gotten to the New World.

 

One thing we have noticed when traveling through flat areas is that it can be difficult to visually determine whether you are climbing or descending. We first ran into this when we were doing the Big Ride Across America in 2011. We were riding in Montana, and couldn't understand why the bike just would not go; brakes weren't dragging, tires were fully inflated. Finally, a fellow rider with a GPS came by and informed us we were climbing a 2% grade for the last 20 miles. After that we determined that if the bike was going unusually fast, we were going down hill, if unusually slowly, then we were climbing.

Today we ran into a similar situation. The road looked pretty flat, there was no head wind to speak of, yet we could not get the bike speed out of the 10's. After three or four miles of this, Margaret thought she heard something funny. We had a flat tire on the trailer! We have climbed what we have called 'railroad hills', or 'highway hills', or even 'river hills' for overpasses that brought us over those obstacles. Now we have to add a new category, a 'flat tire hill.'

 
What you don't see here is the occasional traffic roaring by, 8 feet away at 65 mph.

 Florida countryside is beautiful, but different from Michigan.


Sand Hill cranes in a farmer's field.


Looks like Michigan, but a palm tree?

At about mile 40, we got onto a rail trail which was...


Straight.

But Margaret's quick eyes spotted a tortoise next to the trail. We were told that Gopher tortoises we common around these parts, so we assume that is what it was.





Margaret even got a selfie.



As if that were not enough, we got to admire and cross the Suwanee River. You all know the song, but how many of you have seen it?

 

 

 

 

 Tomorrow (today) we ride to Perry, FL.

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.

Day 188-189, Jan 29-30, 2017. Brandon to Zephyrhills, FL

Our original plan was to leave Brandon yesterday, Sunday, and cycle north to Zephyrhills. Sunday's weather forecast called for temps in the 50's, 15 mph winds out of the north, and rain. I honestly don't recall which one of us was the first to call for a soft rest day, but in the end the decision was unanimous.

You may have heard that the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus is shutting down for good as of May, 2017. They did a few final shows in Sarasota, their home town, then the plan was to go on the road for one last time. You may or may not have an opinion on this. Within our first mile on the bike this morning, we had to stop at a CSX railroad crossing to wait for a train. Lo and behold, it was the Ringling Bros. train! I felt like I was looking at the last passenger pigeon. End of an era. This train would never pass this crossing again. I was too busy gawking to think of getting a picture.

Our route today. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18769977

Not much in the way of pictures today. We did go past the Florida State Fairgrounds just north of Braden.


Notice the clear, blue sky.

Florida has a pavement eccentricity that is, as far as I can determine, unique to itself. It has been seen by us in every area of Florida we have visited. Every once in a while, you will come across  lump of concrete on the edge of the road. No rhyme or reason to it. It is as though some worker found his pockets full of cement, and decided to dump it where he was. Could be four or five inches high, or just an inch or so like the one we saw today. The first couple we came across we barely missed; now I tend to look for the things.



 We had a 10 mph head wind today, but with only 34 miles to ride, it was an easy day. Tomorrow we ride 60 miles, so an early start is called for.