The Days Trickle Down to a Final Few

April 29, 2018

Florida Wildflowers

As the street corner prophet exclaimed, “the end is near.” We are cycling the last few miles towards our tire dip in the Atlantic. It has been an adventure of a lifetime and in two more days it will come to an end. I have met some great people and cycled with them daily. I have seen some sights and looked at this part of the continent in a way that is up close and in slow motion. You just see the countryside differently at bicycle speeds, especially if you break out of the cadence coma and take time to look around. At bicycle speeds you can watch the landscape slowly evolve from the pacific coast through the mountains, deserts, prairies and to bayous and subtropical. Each city, town and village has its own style and character from railroad strip towns to towns radiating outward from a well planned town square. In between are some that are little more than sign posts of what once was. Farms, forests deserts, ranches and wildflowers abound around every bend in the road.

Tonight is our last nigh camping and the place chosen is Payne’s Prairie State Park, s sub-tropical mix of palm trees, oaks and Spanish moss. The weather is hot and the humidity high but we reached it after a fairly easy ride of just over 50 miles. Tomorrow we sleep indoors and the day after we dip our tires and get reacquainted with those who followed our adventure from a distance. It will be a bitter sweet moment but one I look forward to. I may never do anything so epic again but who knows, I may. For now I am happy to have done this and happy to begin that time of in between where great adventures are imagined and planned.