We Got Guts!

Day 50

Blackwater River State Park to Ponce De Leon


Leaving the park this morning we passed through a lot of forest area, and it was very muggy today. We were camping about 2 miles off the route, so we had to back track a little to get back to the right road out.

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, let me say right now for the record – Florida IS NOT FLAT!!!!! It’s like we are back in the hill country of Texas, with its slow rolling hills, and never ending rolling hills. We have climbed along the shoreline and into forest areas that were higher than I ever expected.

We had a planed day of about 65 miles, which it ended up being very close to, what we did not expect was the extreme humidity we were encountering. It was a short day, but because of the heat and humidity we took our time and ended up riding for 5 ½ hours. Along the road towards the end of our day we came across a father and son who have been on the road for three years, the son was 15 – it seemed a little strange to us, and did not know what to make of it. They said they sleep in the woods along the way and they had just passed the 14,000 mile mark. They were headed for San Diego, then heading up the coast.

The only real town of note today was De Funiak Springs; it is a very cute town that seems to be centered around the historic district at Lake De Funiak. We stopped at the lake to check it out, and it must have been prom night, as there were several kids in formal attire getting their pictures taken. We stayed out of the way and went to see the ducks. There were several large rather ugly ducks in the water, so we focused our attention on a few pictures of ourselves at the lake. That’s when all the ducklings started swimming our way. We instantly got our leftover bread from last night and fed the duckling so we could get some pictures.

A little girl came over to watch and demonstrated just how easily one could grab and hold and duckling, we were a little more cautious, since the mother ducks were in the area and closing fast. We used up our bread and rode around the rest of the lake. The homes in the area are beautiful, and show many different architectural styles, and some nice elements of scroll work on the porches.

It was time to move on as we still had a few miles left to go for the day. We arrived at Ponce De Leon, and headed for the hotel, it would be nice to sleep inside in the air conditioned room for a break. We showered and headed out to do laundry and dinner. The laundry mat was on the way, so we stopped and put our clothes in the washer, and would return after dinner to dry them. We were not too concerned with someone stealing our clothes because -1) there was nobody around, and, 2) who wants somebody’s biking shorts and a few Cycling Semicolons biking shirts?????

It was off to dinner, we walked the mile to the end of the road and we chose the Bar B Q place over Sally’s, because none of us has had too much Bar B Q on this trip. Excellent choice, the food was unbelievably good – I had the 2 meat dinner (brisket and sausage) the brisket was awesome – the best I have had since I was in Texas. The people were extremely friendly and we began talking about how difficult it is to get a good brisket meal home, unless we do it ourselves. The owner came out with his just smoked brisket to show off how it looks, and I think he burned his hands in the process. The place was called 4 c Bar b q and they are on the web too!

We could not resist and also ordered desert, strawberry pie, it too was very good. We had to leave soon so we could dry our clothes, the laundry mat closed at 9:00 pm and it was already 8:15. We walked back a half mile to the laundry mat and dried our clothes and went back to the hotel for a good night’s rest.

The Garmin information for today is as follows:

Day 50 Blackwater River State Park to Ponce De Leon by wegotguts at Garmin Connect - Details