January 22, 2024
Day 3: Hampton to St. Augustine to Hastings
The Atlantic Coast
We were met with heavy dew in the morning and just above freezing temps. I went for a quick run down the bike to warm up the toes. This bike path far exceeded my expectations from my brief Google maps review. We would follow it for 30mi before it abruptly ended right before Palatka. We packed up quickly and walked our bikes to the baseball pavilion again to organize our gear on dry picnic tables.
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Sunrise was at 7:30 and we were on the path by 8am: a smooth surface, roughly paralleling a state road, but well away from the noise and heavy trees and swamps protected us from the wind.
9mi in we stopped at Keystone Heights to buy two supplies we had forgotten: a lightning cable for me and toothpaste for Jude. Breakfast again consisted of Elizabeth’s banana bread. In Palatka, we made it up our first bridge of the day over the St. John’s River.
38mi in we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s to fill up our waters, hang our tent on our bikes to dry, and finish off Elizabeth’s loaf of bread and hard salami. We talked to Ben who was making plans to drive down and see Jude at the beginning of February. The bike path picked up again behind the McDonalds’s and we followed it for another 10mi.
Our plan was to do a loop around St. Augustine and end up back on the bike path for camp that night, so we scoped out a nice pavilion with picnic tables off the path and away from the road near the town of Hastings, the Potato Capital of Florida - which explains the rows and rows of furrowed fields with nothing showing but a few leaves sticking out of the ground. We also called an audible and decided to ride the loop clockwise (rather than our planned counterclockwise loop) to take advantage of the wind coming out of the east. This was a good call as we were able to stay on the path and hide from the wind for the most part, taking a bike lane into St. Augustine on US312, crossing the intracoastal waterway and the Matanzas River, then A1A to the beach and pier.
It was a bit anticlimactic. Even though we had just ridden Florida’s coast-to-coast in 2 days, for Jude, his US coast-to-coast journey was just beginning. We snapped a few photos and headed south along A1A for 6mi, then back west on 206 with the wind at our backs, crossed back over the Matanzas River and back to the bike path.
Total mileage for the day was 90mi. We came into camp with tired legs and stomachs hungry for dinner. We’ve been assessing our effort and volume levels and feel like we’re hitting it right on: decent mileage but holding back on our pace to stay conservative on energy. We’re moving pretty much dawn to dusk with several breaks, but not rushing the clock, either. We really feel like we’re getting into a groove, and I’m grateful that our speeds are so similar.
After laying our things out to dry once more, we drooled over our dinners and savored every bite: Chicken Pesto Pasta for Jude and Beef Stroganoff for me - my favorite!!! We talked with Elizabeth on the phone, sorted our things and hit the sack by 9pm.
Today's ride: 90 miles (145 km)
Total: 201 miles (323 km)
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11 months ago