Back to Day 41

11 AM

In a bike shop in St. Augustine. It seems I’ve broken another spoke. That’s 4 rear wheel problems for me, zero for Dana. I think I must be doing something wrong – going too slow, being too wimpy, drinking too much Gatorade – something.

We returned the rental this morning, and rode through St. Augustine to the historic section. We saw the old Spanish Fort

and then followed a tour bus to the fountain of youth. It turns out that the way to the Fountain of Youth is through the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s – which is somewhat historic in it’s own right.

Here is the historic marker for the fountain – we didn’t go in, because it’s a huge tourist emporium.

But since Dana wouldn’t let me drink from the fountain and fix everything that’s wrong with me, he agreed to take a picture with old Juan here.

And we saw peacocks. We like peacocks.

Also in the parking lot of the HoJo’s is this awesome, famous tree

And here’s everything you need to know about the tree:

So then we tried to find the area in town with all the historic houses, because Dana thought I wanted to see it, and I thought he wanted to see it. So we rode around the brick and cobblestone streets for a while, basically until my spoke broke. We saw some lovely old homes, and the streets are narrow and very European looking, but we never saw the official historic house site.

So here we are at Island Bicycle, and Levi is putting a whole new rear wheel on my bike. Dana was nervous that once I rode on 2 broken spokes, more would happen soon. It seems like overkill, but Levi was very nice, he fixed it in only a half an hour, and we’re about to get back on the road.

8 PM

Check out the cool ocean view from our $90 awesome hotel room at The Royal Floridian.

I forgot to mention the cool Spanish ships in the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Augustine.

And that we got to watch the drawbridge go up.

Otherwise, riding from St. Augustine to Ormond Beach has been pretty much what you would expect. We’ve been on or near the water the entire time. We’ve crossed a few bridges, but they have all been safe, with wide shoulders and polite drivers.

We stopped for lunch at The Matanzas Innlet Restaurant, right over the Matanzas bridge. Everything just to the south of St. Augustine is named Matanzas, which means massacre. Go figure. But lunch was delicious.

Somewhere along the way we saw this house. People are really into pirates around here!

Ormond Beach is actually the sight of the first Daytona car race. Here is the historic marker.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the garage, so now you have something to look forward to tomorrow.

Our exact distance for the day. Seems appropriate.

On to Day 43

Back to Day 40

8 PM

Sitting down to dinner, in St. Augustine, after our last cheating day. They have corn-on-the-cob as a side dish. I am SO excited! And we are discussing TV trivia with a guy named Juan who’s like 25, but he knows a lot because he watches TVLand.

We started the day with a trolley tour of Savannah. We’d already biked around most of it, but we didn’t necessarily know what we were looking at. So the trolley tour seemed like a good way to make sure we saw the whole city in a limited time. Turns out we really had seen most of the city, including this treat for our Girl Scout friends:

And about the Forrest Gump sighting – the movie was set in Savannah – so today we saw the restaurant where Jenny worked, and the bench he sat on. But sadly, there was not another Forrest sighting. [We found out later that the city hires Forrest Gump and Paula Dean impersonators for tourists to enjoy.]

After the tour, we had ice cream at Leopold’s – a Savannah tradition since 1919 – followed by lunch at the Starland Cafe. We shared an asparagus sandwich and a salad. There’s that sharing thing again.

Then we headed out of town towards the Okefenokee Swamp. It was very hard to navigate there with the GPS, since the swamp doesn’t really have an address. So after we got to Folkston, we got lost, and when we got found again, we had to drive 5 miles on a dirt road.

This was the only time we were worried about banjo music on a river. Dana made me get out of the car to take this picture, and on hindsight, I’m surprised he didn’t just leave me there, since I was the one who messed up the navigation in the first place.

When we finally reached the swamp’s visitor’s center, we changed into our bike shorts and rode the 8 mile Swamp Island Drive.

The swamp is amazing

We saw an alligator

and a baby water moccasin

and some interesting flowers

and huge woodpeckers that refused to pose for pictures.

Quiz:

Did we put on bug spray before riding in the swamp?
Are we suffering now because we are dumb-asses when it comes to bug spray?
How many baby alligators can you see in this picture? (the answer is 5)

But, while the swamp was beautiful, we saw very little wildlife. Then, in the parking lot as we were leaving, we saw a huge diamondback rattlesnake (5-6 feet long)!

Then we drove to St. Augustine. We will return the rental tomorrow morning, tour the historic part of the city on bikes, and then head south. 500 miles to Key West! I promised Dana he can train me to ride fast in Florida. No promises, but after all this cheating, I will try.

On to Day 42