april 29th, 2013 0nly two more days!

A lovely flower filled ride in Florida to make my total over 2,000 miles!

Today to my surprise I rode 76 miles from Perry to High Springs Florida along beautiful flower-lined roadways with brilliant scarlet, yellow and white wildflowers in full bloom and dazzling the eye with their colors. This must be the season for wildflowers, before the heat of summer. Every one of the roads I rode on had some purple, pink, scarlet or red flowers blowing in the breeze and petals at the ready for photographs. It was refreshing and inspiring to ride and look at the flowers everywhere.
      I began as always wondering how far I could ride. At 45 miles I was hungry and tired BUT our sag driver pointed out that five miles ahead was a town and restaurants - in short supply on these country roads. So I rode on with Carla and Judy R and we ended up at an excellent McDonalds with iced coffee, a chicken-burger with salad, and air conditioning which is always a good thing since the temperature has moved into the 80s.
      The next 7 miles of the ride was along a lovely bicycle path, with no traffic, but with ups and downs along the way and shade from the many trees along the way. That was a nice change from the traffic, and then we turned on to quiet road to a state park.  When I reached mile 58, in the Ichetucknee Springs State Park - isn't that a wonderful name? - I decided I could do another 20 to get to the hotel in High Springs. So I did, riding along rolling roads between fields with horses and cows and occasional goats, and good roads and very little traffic. Arriving at 3:30 p.m. after an 8 a.m. start was very satisfying and completing the whole 76 miles too! The last part of the road was in the park and then we came out on to US 41, a highway but not too busy, and rode along the 8 miles to the High Springs Country Inn on the left. Yay! Definitely feeling of accomplishment and this has pushed my total mileage to well over 2,000 miles - which is amazing. I always knew I wasn't a candidate for EFI - every fricking inch - or even close to 3,100 miles, but to get to 2,000 is really great for me. And there are two more rides to come with extra miles.
     Today was Wendy's birthday. At the picnic dinner in the parking, which she chose, we had a picnic meal: hot dogs, buns with all the fixin/s, potato salad, and beans.  On a hot evening, it was delicious. AND then there were two cakes - a rich chocolate concoction and a fruit decorated white cake. I went for the chocolate which was superb and rich and all the things birthday cakes are supposed to be. And we had wine, beer, soft drinks and water as we chose to wash it down and talk about the day's riding and joke about who had the biggest icecream sundae. I went and had one at the diner opposite when I came in with an iced coffee - yummy.
      Keith, the English guy who is riding cross country with all his gear tied on his bike, reappeared after we hadn't seen him for weeks. We met him at the beginning and then again, a couple of times, and now he hopes to get to St. Augustine at the same time we do, spend a week recovering and then fly back to England. He seems to fit in well with our motley group and he's just one of the gals now.
     Tomorrow we have breakfast at 7:15 and will set out early for Palatka, FL our last stop before St. Augustine.