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Sunday, December 9, 2001 - Jacksonville
50 miles. East of Lake City to Mark and Sue's, Jacksonville, FL
After a very warm evening, we were not surprised to
wake up to another foggy morning. Even tho the fog is quite thick, there is
enough visibility on the road to ride safely, it just isn't very enjoyable. One
problem is the fog quickly forms on your glasses.
About 5 miles from our campsite was the Olustee
Battlefield, where we stopped to look around, checking out the monument to the
Confederate victory there. Florida turned out to be a tough nut for the Union
army to crack.
We then rode highway 90 in towards Jacksonville, which
we planned on taking all the way to the St. John's River in downtown
Jacksonville. The highway was good riding, not much traffic because it was
Sunday. In Baldwin, which is now just inside the Jacksonville city limits, we
stopped at 'Everyone's Restaurant' for an early lunch. It was a great little
restaurant, we got there just in time, before the after church rush.
While we were finishing up, 6 bicyclists rode up to
eat. They had come in from Jacksonville on a 14.5 mile Rails-to-Trails bike path
that we didn't know about. What luck to find out about it just as we were
leaving. We picked the trail up about 3 blocks from the restaurant, it ended
very near HW90.
As we started on our run on the bike path we passed a
couple of cyclists that shortly thereafter made the mistake of passing us. What
they did not realize was that we were still accelerating. It takes a while to
get all our extra weight up to speed but when we did we blew by them and dropped
them big time. We can now ride at that pace now with ease. It was a wonderful,
paved bike path and we made good time on it.
Once back on HW90, we were well into the city. This
part of 90 runs thru the industrial part of town, so we were very lucky to hit
it on a Sunday when the traffic was very light. 5 miles or so further brought us
to downtown where lots of traffic lights slowed our progress. We found the
bridge to get over the St. Johns River, it had a nice walkway that we used and
were able to stop and look at the river and the city. The rest of the ride was
thru very nice neighborhoods. Then on to Mark and Sue's. What a break that it
turned out to be a Sunday.
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