39.4 mi / 11.8 mph / 151 ft. climbing
Home: Davis Retreat

It looks like there is a direct route out of the Hanna Park campground to the quiet coastal street that would take us south, but it’s solidly blocked by a fence (the heatmaps almost fool you until you zoom in and see that the bright line of cyclist traffic has a tiny gap). From the maps I assumed it was a fussy homeowners’ association that didn’t want people from the campground easily accessing “their” street, but now I know that it’s actually the reverse: because the park has admission fees, the entire thing is enclosed in secure fencing!

That unusual structure means that we needed to do a 2.5-mile loop-around to get out of the park and back heading south. But once we hit Ocean Boulevard/First Street, the bike-friendliness of Florida that we experienced yesterday immediately returned. This was another different form though: a Pacific Northwest-style neighborhood greenway, a residential street where cars took a clear backseat to bikes and pedestrians. But unlike the Pacific Northwest, there were no street markings, or curb treatments, or speed humps, and only the smallest possible signs to indicate its greenway status. Instead, the culture just seemed to be determined by the users! And we took our influence from observing them. In addition to slow-rolling cyclists, there were runners, and walkers, all just out in the middle of the street (even though there were sidewalks), giving zero fucks if a car rolled up behind them, and, importantly, the drivers were completely unbothered too!

We were lucky to get some more-explicit instruction when Merle caught up to us on his e-bike. A one-time road cyclist, locked up knees have forced him to the e-bike alternative, and he was interested in (and envious of!) our travels. As we rode together he showed us that going the wrong way for a couple blocks down one-way segments was culturally accepted too. We were blown away when he revealed that he was 89 years old; we had assumed 70s, so he’s certainly an inspiration to us too!

Where the residential grid came to an end, we added a mile to our route by swinging over to Trader Joe’s (as crowded here as everywhere else in the country), and then turned back out onto isolated Ponte Vedra Boulevard. A 25-mile-long coastal ribbon, it was lined with miles of opulent houses, most built with somewhat better taste than their relatively-new constructions would normally achieve. The narrow shoulderless road wasn’t a problem, as drivers remained relaxed and patient, and then dwindled in volume the further south we went.

In a strong contrast to most oceanfront roads we’ve been on, I noticed zero public-access pathways running between houses from the road to the beach. I guess the people on the inland side of the road have a strong incentive to befriend their neighbors across the street? A more important difference is that almost none of the buildings here are raised like we’ve seen in most other coastal areas to protect them from flooding. Are they so confident that hurricane storm surges will never hit here, or does the state simply have less-proactive building codes than other states, which are now coming home to roost in the form of Florida’s spiraling home-insurance costs? The homes on the water side actually might not fare that badly, since they sit atop a surprisingly-tall dune (some even had fairly steep winding driveways to reach them, something I never expected to see in Florida!) But from our point of view on the road, which was at least halfway up the dune, we could look down onto the second floor of houses on the inland side, sitting in a basin just begging to be filled with 10 feet of water!

At Mickler Beach we finally hit a public access point, which now necessarily was a much-more elaborate parking-lot/bathrooms/picnic-tables operation than the simple pedestrian pathways used for access in other states. But that made it a perfect place for us to stop to eat our Trader Joe’s lunch, even if our surplus of oceanfront riding has us so spoiled that Rett didn’t even bother to walk to the top of the dune to see the water. Instead she got a lot more value out of a 15 minute emotional conversation about loss and moving forward with a new widow, who was out walking her dog Max who looked very much like Rett’s beloved Pip.

We shopped at our first Publix supermarket, and then we were turned inland by the St. Augustine Inlet, which also inspired the Spanish to build the oldest European-founded city in the continental US around this waterway. We only caught a brief view of the old city before crossing back out to the next barrier island and our AirBNB, but we will have more time for exploration over the next week as we stay through Thanksgiving.