58.7 mi / 13.2 mph / 400 ft. climbing
Home: Gulf Coast Inn

Florida State Parks gave us a nice sendoff, presenting an almost-completely-dry tent to us in the morning, and a thermometer reading of 66℉! We slept the whole night with our rainfly doors partly opened, something I don’t think we’ve been able to do any time over the last six months (we certainly had warmer nights in the Florida Keys, but rain forced us to keep the doors closed). And while this would be “normal” for the Keys in February, it’s definitely not normal up here in the Panhandle, with these overnight lows some 20 degrees higher than normal, and even above the normal high temperatures!

Ironically, fear of repeating yesterday’s soaking condensation is a reason we made a rare choice to skip breakfast in camp and get it on the road instead. The biggest benefit is that it allowed us to pack all of the cooking gear away before the sun set last night, before it began getting wet, a wet that slows everything down, but a wet that never came. But with a long ride planned for today, we figured having McDonald’s cook our food and clean our dishes would be faster than even a dry morning in camp. That turned out to be a second mode of failure for our plan, because we spent 20 extra minutes talking with a guy at the next table who had ridden cross-country down the East Coast and along the Southern Tier with his brother 10 years ago. It was worth the delay!

We returned to US-98 for the first 35 miles of the ride, and while it wasn’t the empty quietness of its Big Bend stretch, it was relatively-easy to ride in its continuous bike lane. For some reason I had a negative impression of Destin long before we reached it, and by the time we exited that impression was only reinforced. All due to the fact that we didn’t see a single sign, billboard, flag, or bit of graffiti telling us to “Stop! You’ve reached your DESTINation!” C’mon, if a town’s chamber of commerce fails that badly (we’ve seen such punny dad-jokes in much worse-fitting spots all over the state), how terrible must the rest of the city be? Even the dentists failed to encourage citizens to “Let your dentist check your dentin in Destin!” Embarrassing!

We picked up lunch ingredients at Walmart, but then had to seek out a tree-shaded ditch on the far end of their parking lot in order to eat comfortably in the day’s rising heat. We could have stayed on US-98 the rest of the way in to Gulf Breeze, but Rett was willing to add a couple miles to our already-long total to ride a 17-mile stretch of Santa Rosa Island. StreetView suggested it would be the most “ribbon of barrier island” place we’ve cycled since the Outer Banks of North Carolina, while the weather report suggested the crosswinds could become more difficult to deal with out there. Certainly the push south across the bridge was an effort (the pedestrian path was too narrow for our wide bikes, so cars patiently lined up behind us), but once on the island the low-stress road and the high-quality environment told us that we had completely made the right call. Finally after weeks along the Gulf Coast did we actually get to experience a ride along that coast!

The other end of the National Seashore was marked not by the return of housing, but by cars parked on both sides of the roadway. This is where beachgoers coming from the west piled up, unable (or unwilling to put in the extra effort) to access the emptier sections we’d just been through. We paused for a break, and Rett felt a wooziness as she dismounted. Sometimes caused by a lack of sugar, sometimes by heat, but often by a combination of the two, she first refused my offer to set up her chair, but soon relented. While I got her some ShotBloks, a woman wearing a surfing outfit on the other side of the road noticed and came over and asked if we needed any help.

While it didn’t feel like we were in particularly dire straits, she brushed aside our brush-asides, ran back to her car, and soon reappeared with a cold bottle of Gatorade Zero and a bag of ice. Citing her medical background, she recognized that even if it was “only” 72 degrees, the 90% humidity was enough to be heat-stressing Rett, whose body seems to calculate the Heat Index in an entirely different way than the National Weather Service’s official formula. And our EMT’s cure was just as on-target as her diagnosis. With some ice cubes on Rett’s neck and in her armpits, and some cold electrolytes in her stomach, she soon perked back up. It feels like we receive less “roadside assistance” than many other bike tourers, likely because we’re less-often visibly suffering, so that makes us even more grateful for these generous and concerned hands of help.

Day 2

We had space for a second day off on our 2-week Quest for Mobile, which is part of why we felt comfortable putting in nearly 60 miles yesterday (until near the end!) Unfortunately going the ~10 more miles from Gulf Breeze to get us into Pensacola proper wasn’t in the cards, so instead of exploring another historic coastal city, we settled for hanging out in a cheap motel next to a family working on their busted old car for two days.