Dinner last night on a hoppin’ Saturday night in historic downtown High Springs. One disadvantage of our treks across America is our choice to keep pedalin’ even when we travel through an interesting place. Cycled across Suwannee River today… made famous by Stephen Foster’s song, “Swanee River”/“Old Folks At Home”. Foster never saw the river and misspelled it intentionally since he only wanted a river name with only 2 syllables! 🎶
Roadkill: deer, possum, big vulture with another one flying overhead very disturbed. Live fauna: wild turkeys, great egret, deer, vultures. Flora: more Spanish moss, lots of pink bachelor button-looking flowers, azaleas, wisteria, huge pine plantations
Sunday mornings are reliably a lovely time to cycle even when they start out early (due to expected long day) with a bike pump fail causing you to think you have a tire tube fail, and your TST buddies change your front tire! Then a 20 min late start in the fog on a four lane divided highway, O’Leno to Ichetucknee Springs Trail, lovely county roads with no shoulder and busier highways with decent shoulder. 88.3 miles, 1719’ Thank goodness for Tom and Steven pulling me along at a 14mph daily average pace. The wind got pretty bad the last half of the day together with the 85° temps. Did meet a young man on the Southern Tier who had started in San Diego. He was anxious to get to the next café before it closed on a Sunday, so didn’t get to chat much.
Staying in a lovely 1890 B&B tonight owned and operated by an amazing 84 year old Linda. Madison, although the county seat, seems somewhat depressed since I-10 is just south of town. Tired but used my GRIT today!!
TransAm Cycle 3.0 