4/3/26
Hello from Apex, North Carolina! I’m enjoying a nice visit with my aunt and uncle and their two doggies, but meanwhile I still need to catch up on my Florida adventure blog posting!
I’ll keep this one short too, mostly photos.
I stayed in a hotel in St. Augustine for two nights. During the intervening day, I visited the beautiful nearby Ravine Gardens. To get there, I was pleased to experience about 12 miles of the 19-mile-long Palatka-to-St. Augustine State Trail.
This trail was much less shady than most others I’ve seen here in Florida, and much more agricultural, with potato and cabbage fields aplenty. Fortunately the day was warm without getting too hot.
To get to the trail, I biked a few miles south of the downtown St. Augustine area to the Seabridge Mall, where I caught the quaint little Sunshine Bus Company bus. Similar to most of the buses I had taken from Gainesville to St. Augustine, these were short buses staffed by chatty local drivers. Once again, upon boarding both the outbound and inbound buses, the drivers told me bikes were not allowed on board, but I was able to prevail upon them by arguing that my small folded bike wasn’t “really” a bike in that form.
The outbound bus dropped me in the rural community of Hastings, where I picked up the trail and rode to Palatka.
From downtown Palatka, it was just a mile or so to the lovely Ravine Gardens. The weather was perfect, and the azaleas were at peak bloom, so I couldn’t have asked for a better day to visit.
I spent at least an hour contemplatively experiencing the forest on a shady bench along the ravine trail, and then headed back out to bike back the 12 miles to catch the bus in Hastings again.
Before I rejoined the trail, I thought it would be fun to bike to the Palatka Amtrak station. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a train to or from that station, since it doesn’t offer checked baggage service, so I made do by snapping a pic of the exterior before continuing my bike journey.
It was a very pleasant day.
Coming up next, my bike ride south from St. Augustine to Flagler Beach!
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