43.5 mi / 11.7 mph / 313 ft. climbing
Home: Alafia River State Park

Our first ride of 2025 had us continuing our northward turn that we’d started just before the holidays. The December winds that had largely pushed us on our way south had not magically turned around for us in January, so we were facing into them whether we turned north or east. They weren’t too strong, but Rett still handled them more calmly than usual, perhaps with our time off letting her frustration-buffer drain completely.

The winds were enough to make Rett ready for a lunch break at 11:30am, which was not only early by the clock, but early by distance: without really planning it this way, we rarely have more than 20 miles to go when we’re done with lunch, but this day we left ourselves more than 30. With the day topping out at that breezy 68 degrees, but me insisting on a Florida outfit of shorts and t-shirt, we made sure to find a spot in the sun to sit while we ate.

Alafia River State Park is known for its mountain biking (because it was a former quarry, which created some rare Florida topography), so nearly every other site had mountain bikes alongside their trucks and RVs. But none of them came over to chat, suggesting that the mountain bikers see themselves as culturally-distant from us as the spandex-clad roadies do.

Nearly every stay at a Florida State Park has required repeatedly checking the website for cancellations, but I was checking for more than a week before one popped up in the “normal” loop at Alafia. Perhaps that’s because it’s a small campground, and a nice tradeoff was that it’s the first campground where we didn’t have to go through a whole pointless registration procedure in the office. The other loop is reserved for equestrians, but I saw only two horse trailers amongst the ~16 sites, so now at least I know that there isn’t a strong cultural norm against non-horse-people “taking” equestrian sites.