1/25/26
Hello from Orlando! I’ll have to catch you up in the next post about my journey here from New Smyrna Beach (and by that time I’ll be in St. Petersburg, where I’m heading tomorrow via a bike-train-bus combo) but for now, I’m going to cover two days of travel on my just-wrapped eastern Florida bike tour.
When I left off in the last post, I was taking a day of rest in Longwood with my Warmshowers hosts Lee and Sharon.
The following morning, I set out along the bike path (this segment was the Seminole Wekiva Trail) for points north—specifically, Lake Helen and my new Warmshowers hosts, Gary and Sharon.
I enjoyed the infrastructure of the trail: as you can see, there were tunnels, overpasses, and beautiful wooded areas, as well as local artwork depicting wildlife, mostly local.
Much of the early half of the trail was rather unremarkable—basically a wide sidewalk next to very busy roads. But the second half got very pretty.
At one point, I took a turn around a bend and found myself in an unexpected, otherworldly environment—a cypress swamp with a long boardwalk bridge/trail. In the next few days I was to encounter many more cypress swamps—they are common in Florida—but this one really hit me unexpectedly, and I took a few minutes to sit on a trail bench there and just drink in the magical environment, surrounded by tree canopy.
I didn’t get a pic, but a beautiful gray heron suddenly took flight from the swamp during that time. I really love those birds.
After that, it was several miles of thick, lush jungle-like riding, on a smooth, curving trail. It felt so magical, and the air was cooling off to a perfect late-afternoon temperature.
The last several miles of the day, I had to leave the trail and get back on roadways, which was a bit of a letdown, but that’s just a part of touring. By the end of the day, I had covered about 32 miles (51.5 km) which felt like a good achievement.
I arrived to Gary and Sharon’s house, where they fed me a dinner of grilled veggie dogs and vegetables, and then showed me to their guest quarters, which is a small but modern and fully equipped travel van outside their house. It was fun to feel like I was “camping” for the evening, and Gary had gone above and beyond stocking me up with vegan snacks: bananas, Clif bars, potato chips, and a few other items.
In the morning, I did a quick load of laundry, then got back on the road, this time to New Smyrna Beach, on the Atlantic coast.
Unfortunately, getting back on the bike trail would have meant very significant extra mileage, so I took roads the whole way. I expected to ride only about 21 miles (34 km) but it ended up being closer to 25 mi/40 km.
It started out kind of pleasant, but went sideways pretty quickly.
First, Google Maps sent me on a road that turned out to be private. It was funny, because Gary and Lee (and even Tom, the previous night) had all been extolling the virtues of Ride With GPS, as opposed to Google Maps, because they all complained of Google sending them on wild goose chases too many times. I had only experienced that once or twice, in quite a lot of riding, so I wasn’t too concerned. However, it did happen to me that next day!
I started down a pleasant, country road—seemingly a nice alternative to the higher-speed paved road with a minimal shoulder—but it soon became sandier and more rustic, and then it suddenly turned into a private driveway, with multiple signs indicating private property, 24-hour video surveillance, etc (no pic, for obvious reasons) so I turned back for a lumpy, bumpy two miles or so.
Soon after that, I ended up on the even wider, higher-speed Hwy 44. Luckily it had a pretty good bike lane. But then Google Maps routed me onto a “quieter” road, but it had no bike lane, and a minimal shoulder, and it was a pretty narrow road undergoing construction. I briefly considered turning around and taking my chances on Hwy 44 instead, but decided to press on. Eventually, it routed me back to Hwy 44 anyway… only now, the bike lane was horrendous—narrow, with a rumble strip on the left and grass overgrowth on the right. I also had to navigate a highway on-ramp under these conditions.
1/10. Would not recommend.
Finally, though, I made it to the welcoming home of my Host a Sister host, Jean (who turned out to be a Warmshowers host, too!)
I had a nice afternoon and evening spending time with her and her rescued Bengal cat, Mufasa.
And then the next and final day was to be the nicest day of the tour yet! Post to come soon.
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