January 22, 2014
Day 18: Silver Springs to Gainesville: We join the ACA route after 1000km
The meeting with the Days Inn manager went well. Dodie explained about the errors in their advertising, and the manager came up with a 20% discount on the room rate. Dodie was happy. The manager seemed happy.
We left Silver Springs without seeing that which makes it famous - the springs. Apparently there is a jungly area where the spring supports lots of aquatic life. Glass bottomed boats were first used here. Lots of jungly movies were also shot here, including Tarzan and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Even though this is theoretically the high season, it is so cold that the parking lot of the Springs was completely empty.
Cycling north at 7 a.m., the temperature was 1.5 degrees C (under 35 degrees F). With a moderate head wind, it was really cold, and we had to put on all our stuff. The sun rose higher, but did not have much effect on the temperature, which was around 5 most of the day, before finally creeping all the way to 10.
The road toward Hawthorne started off with some pleasant rural scenery, formed by mostly thoroughbred horse farms. The traffic here was not as bad as in other places, and the so the ride was really fairly pleasant.
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The crossroads (not really a town) called Citra featured The Orange Shop. Although on the surface this is just another of the shops that will ship citrus back north, this one had a long history and was in the mostly original building. The story goes that the original orange growing family put some bags of fruit out on the porch when the automobile brought travellers along the road. The porch and the bags of fruit are still there, and the current family are only the second owners after the originals.
Inside they are making juice and giving samples. They use what is in season at the moment, and whatever it was today, it was the tangiest and best orange juice you have ever tasted.
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Beyond Citra, blueberry farms and nurseries take over for a while. The bushes looked really good, and as with so many other things we see on the road, we wished we could take some home.
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Nearing Hawthorne, we knew for a certainty we would intersect the Hawthorne to Gainsville bike path.This is where we pick up the ACA southern tier route, so we had a good map of the area, and also a picture of the path on the GPS. This was all a good thing, because they did an excellent job of hiding the trailhead. There is no sign on the highway, and there is no sign on any of the nearby streets. We stuck with it, though, and found it.
Once on the trail we found that it, like the other Florida trails we found, is really super. In this case, there are a number of adjoining preserved areas, with side nature trails through them. At least two of these came with their own maps and pamphlets. The whole way to Gainsville is only 25km, so as before it was over all too soon.
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We had a coupon for America's Best Value Inn at $37.99, so coming off the trail we headed for that. It turned out to be quite far. At first we passed through a rather poor suburb and then on University Street some interesting, old and rambling but derelict buildings. Things looked up when we came to one of these buildings in perfect repair and acting as a B&B.
We proceeded along the sidewalk, since traffic was rather heavy on the wide street. This brought us into contact with pedestrians, and gave our first impression of the friendliness of people in this town. We greeted people whose way we were possibly crossing, and got friendly acknowledgements. There was time, apparently, as we quickly passed for people to say things like "How you doin' now, have a good evening".
In what we took to be the centre of downtown there was a large farmers' market just getting ready to close down. We waded in and very quickly were answering questions about where we were coming from and going to. A bit surprising was when one young woman said something like "The Southern Tier, no doubt". It turned out she was half of a couple visiting the market with their Warm Showers hosts, after crossing from San Francisco and hoping to make St Augustine tomorrow!
It was starting to get dark, so we had to get on with it, but we exchanged as much info with the couples possible. One thong they were able to convey to us was their experience staying on church grounds. They would phone the number usually found on the church signage, and invariably get permission to pitch their tent on the church grounds, or possibly they would be invited to sleep inside, or at least to use the washroom.
Others at the market had their own touring stories to relate. One had a friend who cycled Seattle to Key West, and back, and another told of motorbiking across the country, with the challenges of getting into the cold and slippery mountains, like us on only two wheels.
By the time we left the market, we were basically into full lights and flashers mode. In traffic and dark things can be quote disorienting, but fortunately our GPS stuff is most visible in the dark. We made our way to the motel, and were pleased that they not only accepted our coupon but also gave us a better room and a promise to follow the blog.
Attached to this motel is a Chinese buffet, with a sushi buffet and also a stir fry grill. The quality was excellent, and we tried to only take a reasonable amount. After a day in the cold, though, this really hit the spot.
For tomorrow we think we have a camping spot in our sights. But for tonight the warm motel room is going to be very much appreciated!
Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 1,008 km (626 miles)
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