We spent the last few days riding down the coast of Georgia, before crossing into Florida yesterday.
Georgia surprised me by being my favorite state for cycling in the south (so far). As other cyclists warned us, bike infrastructure gets progressively worse as you head south from Virginia. We’ve noted deteriorating conditions for bikes – smaller and smaller shoulders, then rumble strips. But when we hit Georgia, suddenly it looped around and became so rural that the riding was great again. Slightly curvy and undulating roads; good asphalt; relaxed traffic measurable in minutes-per-car; beautiful farms with an occasional tiny town hosting a stick-to-your-ribs buffet.
We expected thunderstorms so we crammed three days of riding into two to reach the one nearby hotel on our route – in Nahunta, GA, population 1,000. We took off our first full rest day in a long time. Usually when we’re “resting,” we’re actually exhausting ourselves being tourists in a city somewhere. But Nahunta was a small place, so we planned to do absolutely nothing, which we enjoyed very much. I spent most of the day working on a painting in the library. We also watched a lot of bad movies in the hotel and made several raids to the local Piggly Wiggly for fresh food.
We left Nahunta feeling refreshed, and it was a short ride before we crossed over into Florida.
Very quickly the rural countryside disappeared and we were back in tourist country. Our first Very Florida Experience™ was to stop at one of the Citrus Center gas station tourist traps. It was actually a real delight on a bicycle – all the chilled orange slices and juice we could sample. The employees seemed pretty bored so I guess they were happy to accommodate our enthusiasm for fresh citrus.
Today we continued along the barrier islands on the eastern edge of the Florida coast, passing through Big and Little Talbot State Parks, and then the beach towns along route A1A. The damage from recent hurricanes (notably Irma) was still evident here, with lots of ongoing construction and special debris collection stations.
At the end of the day, we reached St. Augustine, which is our final destination on the Atlantic Coast Cycling route. I feel like I should be reflecting on the enormity of the accomplishment, or at least have something deep to say – but I have a very large dinner to sleep off!
Yeah for big meals 🙂