48.0 mi / 14.2 mph / 80 ft. climbing
Home: Wild Fern Hipcamp

Rett didn’t roll over and ask what time it was until nearly 8am, but that was fine because that meant we weren’t making breakfast in the freezing cold, and we didn’t need to be because we’d have another tailwind to push us on the day’s ride. Ok, 44 degrees at 8am was still pretty cold, but shorts were fine by the time of our departure.

The first part of the ride continued the amazing canopy road that we’d finished on yesterday, but after a few miles mid-century suburban houses abruptly replaced the live oaks lining the path, with the buildup gradually increasing into Daytona Beach.

The road that hugged the Intracoastal Waterway was nice and relaxed, and except for a painted early-2000s Corvette “Official Pace Car” that we saw in a grocery store parking lot, thankfully none of the Speedway that Daytona is famous for bled onto the public streets.

Near New Smyrna, a guy who must have passed us pulled off into a driveway and flagged us down. He’d ridden across the country twice, in his 60s, and was excited to relive those memories. Most people who talk with us are full of questions, but it’s at least as gratifying when people want to share their stories, because it means that they’re seeing themselves in us (whereas so many of our questioners find us so befuddling as to be a different species).

I asked if he had any advice about taking the 5-miles-longer trail vs. another 20 miles on US-1, but he’d never done the trail. He’d done US-1 though, and had no problem with it, so we decided to just stick with it too. In retrospect it was definitely the right choice, because our strong tailwind’s consistency began flagging over those 20 miles, and the trail would have zig-zagged us and put us in even less-optimal directions for a much longer distance. So while we couldn’t maintain the 15mph average speed of the first half of the day, the 14.2mph final average marks the first time we’ve done back-to-back 14mph days. 93 miles covered relatively easy!

We’re at a Hipcamp tonight, camping on someone’s private land. It’s down a side road, past miniature horses, then onto dirt around a couple turns, so it’s basically a chance to stay on one of the rural jungle-forested properties we’ve been attracted to from the road over the last couple days. Our host wasn’t there to welcome us, but when I inquired about firewood (one of the attractions of staying here on this 2nd cold night in a row was that the listing said firewood was included), a kid showed up with an armload of random bits, and then three dried palm fronds to use as a firestarter. They lit immediately and burned hot enough to take the chill out of our bones, and then got the real wood going. I augmented with more fallen bits on the property, and then when our host got home she’d picked up a whole bundle for us. So I was able to sit comfortably outside for hours when I otherwise would have had to get in the sleeping bag.