Day 27: Bonifay to Crestview

January 31, 2014

The warming trend was supposed to be well underway today, but the road was foggy and cold. The temperature stayed under 8 degrees easily until noon, and we found ourselves looking for handi-marts to warm up in. If one of these had had something fresh, like even a low quality donut, we would also have gone for it. But no, Little Debbie was in full charge. One thing we did find, in Caryville, was an extensive display of handguns. These frankly make us feel ill, but there is still a morbid fascination. You would never, ever, never! see this in Canada, so it is a valid tourist spectacle.

At the only gas station in Careyville, they had a large selection of handguns. This pink .38 is ok, but for cycling they had a smaller, purple, .22

Another claim to fame for Caryville is the Worm Fiddling sign at the beginning of town. This sign also got caught in last year's blog Geezer Test by Dan Patenaude.

This same sign was photographed by Dan Patenaude in Geezer Test last year. Here is my shameless ripoff of his caption: Toward the end of the day we passed through the little town of Caryville, Fl, the town that identifies itself as "the Worm Fiddling Capital of the World". A status hotly contested by worm charmers around the world. Upon further investigation it was discovered that the activity is also known as worm charming, worm grunting and worm fiddling and involves vibrating the soil which encourages worms to the surface. Competitive worm charming is regulated by the International Federation of Charming Worms and Allied Pastimes (IFCWAP). I am not making this up.

Also in the gas station we get up to date with latest local news. Here we see that the bridge at Panama City did finally reopen, though with problems. Hopefully the icy conditions will be avle to fade into memory now. However we did run into one last reminder at Defuniak Springs: a frozen fountain.

The traffic problems with the Panama City bridge caused by icing have been headline news for days. Now it seems the cold actually broke the bridge.

This frozen fountain displays how cold it must have been last night

By noon, the temperature began to climb rapidly, and we could enjoy our surroundings without being distracted by feeling frozen. Without all the diverted traffic from I-10, we were left with a reasonably quiet and park like environment. The road is smooth and broad, and lined by pine woods.So we just cruised along, looking at the rivers, earth, horses, and other natural features.

Our road today, free of I-10 traffic, became a lovely parkway.

We are definitely not in British Columbia! "Hatchee" means river in many southeast native languages.

Georgia red clay is famous. We must be close enough, so that road cuts here come up red too.

Defuniak Springs is famous with us, because it is the end point of the ACA Section 7 mapset, and so gets its name on the cover. Defuniak itself is a nice enough little place, though it lacks a full range of shops. We think a lot of things have perhaps moved a little south, where the I-10 interchange is.

This is a monument to confederate dead at the Defuniak Springs courthouse. Note the confederate flag flying in front of this official building.

Just beyond Defuniak we came upon a small Piggly Wiggly. Dodie went in, since we are looking for postcards to send to the kids. She came out, however, with six Krispy Kreme plain glazed donuts. So now we can give a partial analysis. It's only partial because this was not a shop where the donuts might have been fresher, and we did not see the range of flavours, nor did we compare to Dunkin Donuts. Despite all that, our report is - that they are pretty good - quite light and not too sweet. The box says they are made with the same secret recipe from 1937, and that just as then it takes 5 1/2 hours to make each donut. Hmmm, where are they getting these statistics from?

We knew that our only hope for a place to stay was Crestview, and that was a fair distance away. Actually, "only hope" refers to a campground or motel. On the other hand, there were lots of nice wild camp spots in the woods along this stretch. The only thing about wild camp at this time of year is that dark comes about 6 p.m. So wild campers need to spend about 12-13 hours in the dark, and without even a sanitary block to hang out in, any blog writing would be done lying in a sleeping bag, As a result, we were hightailing it for Crestview.

This is when we ran into Mae and Andy, coming the other way. These were the first cyclists we have met on the ACA, and naturally were thrilled to meet them. There was not a lot of time to talk, though, because dark was on its way. Mae and Andy are not doing a blog, which erases the excuse I gave about wild camping. So we described some of the nice holes in the woods we had recently spotted. As we held our strange convention on the highway, the man who lived in the facing house came out to check that everything was all right. We assured him we were fine. After we said our goodbyes, we noticed that Mae and Andy wheeled over to the man's house. So clearly they would ask if they could pitch on his lawn. So far, we have been too shy for that kind of strategy.

The only tourists we have seen in weeks. Mae and Andy started in San Francisco and have been on the road three months.

Unique solution for waterproofing panniers

Crestview is quite a large town, and like the rest plays the trick of getting rid of the shoulder in favour of a second traffic lane. With light almost all gone, we now ran all our lights and flashers - which is actually quite a lot - four per bike. We found the motel we had scoped out - The Hilton (which is actually a small independent) - quite easily. The motel has a huge number of units, no idea why, but ours is generously large so that the bikes fit in easily. From here we are asking ourselves again where tomorrow will end, and where any motels or camping are located. Pensacola is almost in reach but 90-95 km is a big day for us, and we already did that today. So we are still working out this question of motel and camping and the spacing between any of it. Meantime, instead of lying in our sleeping bags we are watching "Say Yes to the Dress". Maybe the bags was a better idea!

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN

Our friend Michel Fleurance in Nantes France is keeping track of where we have been, If you click on the link below, you will be taken to an entry that he made in our Guestbook, that shows an updated track. Give it a try:

CLICK HERE

Today's ride: 94 km (58 miles)
Total: 1,456 km (904 miles)

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