37.0 mi / 12.7 mph / 433 ft. climbing
Home: Hog Island Recreation Area

While Florida has surprised us with its excellent bike accommodations that make it comfortable to ride almost anywhere in the state, we’ve only had glimpses of what most of today’s ride was like: a classic Midwest-style bike-touring day down quiet farm roads. These were mostly roads with no bike facilities, because they don’t need to do anything special to make them comfortable to ride; it’s the busy highways that necessitate the bike lanes and bike-path-alternates that we’ve used to traverse most of the state.

And we had some of that to start, on FL-50, but Rett endorsed adding a mile of winding through a residential neighborhood to avoid a shoulderless section. But it was only once we branched down Tuscanooga Road that we entered bike-touring nirvana. Google StreetView showed little traffic, but I was still surprised by the “one car every five minutes” emptiness. And Florida farm country, with its moss-draped oaks and palmetto understory, bears little resemblance to the Midwest!

Our final five miles made us pay for the ease of the previous 30, by delivering one of the least-accommodating roads we’ve been on in Florida! Despite fairly-continuous traffic, it generally gave us just an 8-inch ribbon to ride on, between the rumble strip to the left of our tires, and encroaching grass/dirt to the right. We’ve both had minor sore throats for the last few days, having unsurprisingly picked up a bug or two while packed in line with children, in winter, for days on end in the theme parks. But Rett’s morphed into a full-blown energy-sapping cold today. So it was especially impressive that at her lowest-energy point, she stayed on that ribbon flawlessly, something that feels like the hardest thing in the world to do when I’m woozy.

So that made me feel even more terrible for “rewarding” her by rear-ending her for the second time in the last three months! Luckily this one was much less damaging, as I was going only 5mph when she unexpectedly stopped in front of me, not 18mph. And it was much less my fault, though not hers either. It came as we were riding through the campground loop looking for our site, and a dog came loping out toward us from another site. Our usual approach when dogs chase us is to continue riding while I (as the one in the rear, closest to the teeth) do whatever is necessary to stop the dog, shielding Rett and let her ride on unmolested. This time though, she (reasonably) recognized the dog as a non-serious threat, so stopped, while I was slowly pedaling and keeping my eye on the dog behind us. I suppose most of the blame goes to the dog or his owners (they apologized), but really, I can’t expect people to keep their dogs tied down 24/7 at their campsite, so this is one that truly fits under the “accident” category. I dented her glasses case when my front pannier whacked into her rear, and my tire ran up on her calf, but luckily that was the majority of the damage.

Hog Island is our first stay at a State Recreation Area, so it’s a bit less-fancy than the state parks (no electric at our site, the horror!), but our site was huge and beautiful, so it was a shame that Rett’s affliction prevented her from really enjoying it. Due to the cool day and her dwindling energy, she made the rare decision to skip a shower; a wise one, IMO, especially since the bathrooms, while certainly not the worst we’ve ever used, were good ones to skip!