September 10, 2016
Day 102 Chiefland to Crystal River - Far Enough!
HOME!
We had a great ride today to a wonderful destination - Team S's house. Team A will stay with us tonight and then ride four more days to their house. They have been a joy to travel with and we will miss being with them every day.
I am celebrating completing this adventure with the champagne left for us by good friends and outstanding house sitters, Cathy and Stan. Thank you both for taking such good care of our house and being such great friends. We could not do a trip like this without you. So, I'm going to enjoy my champagne and complete this post tomorrow!
OK - here's my report of yesterday's ride. We left Chiefland with only 52 miles needed to reach our (Team S) goal of 5000 miles.
There is still flooding in places along the west central coast. The picture isn't very good, but there is water standing on the west side of US 19 in many places.
We could have taken US 19 south to Crystal River and had enough miles, but we decided to take the more scenic CR 336 through the Goethe National Forest and then go through Dunnellon. It is a quiet, peaceful ride through the woods - a nice alternative to US 19.
Once we reached Dunnellon, we entered our home county - an exciting milestone!
We could have taken the shortest route home from Dunnellon and gone through some hilly (for Florida) residential neighborhoods, but we chose to take the Withlacoochee State Trail. This is our "home trail" and a place we ride several times a week. It is a great trail.
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All this choosing to take the long way made our route today 68 miles. It was our last day - and our last ride of this trip with Team A. I was ready to get home, but not ready, really, to have the day end. But, end it did, and we arrived in our driveway about 2:30 - happy and proud that we actually rode our bikes to Canada and back. I wasn't sure we would make it the whole way, but WE DID IT!!
Today's ride: 68 miles (109 km)
Total: 4,985 miles (8,023 km)
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