Panhandle to peninsula

September 9, 2016

Today we turned the corner from traveling east across the Florida panhandle to moving south down the Florida peninsula. This area was hit hard by rain from Hermine. At our first rest stop of the day, 27 miles south of Perry, the convenience store smelled of Lysol or some similar cleaner. The coffee and fountain drink dispensers were out of order because running water was still not available.

We were told the water coming out of the faucet was brown. I can see why that would not be ideal for fountain drinks, but would anyone object to brown coffee?

Why are there trees growing in that stream? Because normally the stream is a trickle running between the inner trees. It will take a long time for this area to drain.

When we reached Cross City, we had a drink at a Dairy Queen, but nothing to eat. We were back in familiar territory and knew we needed to hold off eating for a few more miles. We left US 98 and got onto a rail to trail bike path that took us to the town of Trenton, home of the Suwannee Valley Quilt Shop.

Crossing the Suwannee River. It's best to avoid singing about the river.

We stopped along the trail to take a picture of a tortoise. Our policy for the next few days will be to take pictures of common Florida sights that we would normally ignore. While we were stopped we started noticing all of the butterflies. As we watched, a love story unfolded. A dark swallowtail butterfly was going from flower to flower sipping nectar. Another butterfly of the same species was following an inch behind her, never visiting any flowers himself, just hovering behind her.

When so many different butterflies are in the same area, I sometimes wonder how butterflies manage to find mates of the correct species. Obviously butterflies are much better at identifying butterfly species than I am. This male swallowtail had not only identified a member of the correct species, it was obvious he had discovered his soul mate, the one butterfly out of millions that he wanted to be with, the one he dreamed of as the mother of his caterpillars.

Gopher tortoises are a common sight on Florida bike trails.

Stealth butterfly, almost impossible to spot edge on.

I digress, back to the Suwannee Valley Quilt shop in Trenton. The quilt shop was started by a woman who single handedly revitalised the town of Trenton. After making a success of the quilt shop she expanded into adjacent buildings with antiques and other businesses. Hidden inside the quilt shop is the Suwannee Rose cafe. With the exception of Alain and Kerry, every single customer in the quilt shop/ cafe was a woman. This is understandable, the décor is very feminine and not many guys are big into quilting.

Here's the thing; not only does the Suwannee Rose cafe serve great lunches, they have a fantastic collection of baked goods. The size of the slices of cake would give a hungry lumberjack pause, but somehow the little old ladies who patronize (matronize?) the cafe manage to eat these huge desserts.

It doesn't look like they cater to hungry bikers.

After lunch at the Suwannee Rose we should have ridden another 50 miles to burn off the cake, but we only had 10 left to ride. We passed lots of cattle and hay fields and then we came across people harvesting peanuts. Although this is a fairly common crop in northern Florida, I had never seen a peanut harvest before. The plants themselves look completely dead and I wouldn't have guessed that there were peanuts beneath the surface waiting to be harvested.

The land looks completely barren to me, but there's treasure beneath the surface.

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