Date: 2008-04-29
From: St Augustine, FL

To: Tennessee
Miles today: 0.0

Today is the 29th of April.....and I'll be walking on the AT again starting tomorrow, so I figured I'd better get this update of the bike trip done today. I'll start with a list of the towns we stayed at since my last update on the Southern Tier Bicycle Trail; I left off at Pascagoula, MS, then Dauphin Island, AL, then Pensacola, FL, then Crestview, FL, then Chipley, FL, then Chattahoochee, FL, then Tallahassee, FL, then Monticello, FL, then White Springs, FL, then Gainesville, FL, then East Palatka, FL and ended the trip on the Atlantic Ocean in St Augustine, FL.......whew!! :-) When we left Pascagoula, MS, we rode through the shrimp capitol of Alabama.....Bayou La Batre. (We ate barbecue) We rode to Dauphine Island, AL and the sign said the ferry was closed, but we thought it would be open the next day, so we kept riding and spent the night on the island, It was still closed the next morning. Mrs Gorp yogied a ride to the other side of the bay from a young biologist from SeaLab by the name of Mark. He had to ride almost 2 hours around the bay because of the closed ferry too.....and he had a pickup truck. :-) We stopped at the FL/AL border and saw the FloraBama Bar was open at 11 am. We had to go in. Ha!! Mrs Gorp had been carrying a magic marker to leave some petroglyphs somewhere....well, she decided to write on the walls of the bar. Actually, I guess it was me that wrote inside the bar, she got caught on camera, by me, writing on the outside. We had to leave a link to Liteshoe's website somewhere....and figured the bar was as good a place as any to promote her book. :-) We rode right up to the Buffington's home in Pensacola, FL. Bear Bag and Sweet Pea hiked the AT in 2000 and Mrs Gorp knew them well. I had met Bear Bag a couple times before, but had never met Sweet Pea before. Cimarron came over and brought me a bag of coffee, then we all went out to dinner at a nice Italian place and sat there eating and talking for over 2 hours. The next day, Bear Bag decided to ride with us to make sure we got out of town and didn't show up on his doorstep again. ;-) Sweet Pea made us all breakfast, then we headed out. Bear Bag got a flat within the first couple miles and had me show him how to change a flat. (He changes a flat just like Mrs Gorp does......they both let Stumpy get HIS hands dirty) We rode to Milton, FL, where Cimarron was waiting to take Bear Bag back home. We said our goodbyes and Mrs Gorp and I were on our way again. Bear Bag assured us that it was mostly flat riding....we logged 2,017 feet of elevation gain in all the small hills.......that's NOT flat riding!!!! :-) We rode into Crestview and crossed the Florida National Scenic Hiking Trail a couple times. That brought back memories of fried chicken at Ryan's when I walked through here a few years ago. Guess where we ate that night?? We were leaving town the next morning and found a nice little sit-down breakfast place to eat. When we asked for the check, the waitress said our breakfast had already been paid for by local woman and her mother who had already left. THANKS!!!!! We rode into Chattahoochee a couple days later and Xmas picked us up in his truck and took us to his 75 acres in Bainbridge, GA for a couple days. He had a great spot on the pond where we stayed in a screened house that was built over the pond. We slept well listening to the frogs. Xmas smoked some pork on his Green Egg smoker and it turned out great!! We spent the day cleaning up the mess Chief had left when he was here last October. Chief had crap spread out all over the place and Xmas refused to clean it up, so Mrs Gorp and I decided to try and clean up the Ol' Chief's image. Xmas dropped us back in Chattahoochee and we rode on. A local Tallahassee bicycle rider started talking to us and rode with us into Havana, FL. He showed us a great little restaurant called Mockingbird Cafe. We ate lunch and listened to live music, before riding on to eArThworm's home in Tallahassee, FL. It was great seeing eArThworm again....and the one inch thick ribeye's that she served us. ;-) Thanks for that eArThworm!!! We watched a dvd of a news story done about the Trail at Phipps Park that she maintains. eArThworm did a great job on the local news telling about the features of the park. We got to go to the park ourselves the next day with her before we rode out of Tallahassee. We rode to Monticello, FL and ate at a really good Mexican restaurant. It's funny how we could never find good Mexican food all along the Mexican border. We had to wait till we got to Florida for good Mexican food. We rode out of Monticello, FL the next morning. I was cruising down a hill really nicely, when a big dog came out of nowhere and I thought I was going to crash.. I didn't even get to spray the bugger because I had to hold on to the handlebars with both hands. I didn't crash, so I guess we were both lucky. It was another hot, humid day in the upper 80's. We rode off Trail about a mile to get to a motel near White Springs, FL. We rode to Gainesville, FL the next day, stopping at a very good seafood restaurant in High Springs for lunch. Our waiter had hiked some of the AT before, so it was fun talking to him about that. We rode through Gainesville, FL the next morning and rode by the University of FL. I've never seen so much coin in the road. I wanted to stop and pick it all up, but I'd never get to the coast if I did. :-) We rode the Gainesville/ Hawthorn Bicycle Trail for about 16 miles. That was great to get away from the road for a while. We passed the Florida Trail again that day and I actually remembered crossing the road there. I had seen a bobcat a few miles before when I was backpacking the FL Trail in '05. We rode over the St Johns River and stayed in East Palatka, FL that night. (I've run foot races over that bridge in the past) We rode out of East Palatka the next morning and caught up to 2 bicyclists that were finishing up a multi-year ride of the Southern Tier. The one guy had been hit by a pickup truck in N FL last year, so he came back this year to finish up. We met Dan in Molassas Junction, FL. He AND his bike looked sooooooo clean. He had just started that morning to ride west on the Southern Tier Bicycle Trail. Good luck Dan!!!! Hammock Hanger met us just as we were riding into St Augustine, FL She followed us to the end, then took some pictures of the finish as we dipped our bicycle tires into the Atlantic Ocean. We stuck our bikes on her Jeep and rode in air conditioned comfort to her cathouse in Jacksonville, FL. Ha!! :-) We went out to a good seafood place for dinner, toasted the end of our bicycle ride, then went back to her house. Her husband got home from work late, so we didn't get to see him till coffee the next morning. We all went out for breakfast, then Mrs Gorp and I picked up a rental car at the airport and headed for N GA to get my pickup truck back from Winton at Neels Gap. We got my truck the next day, dropped the rental off at the Greenville, SC airport, then drove to TN, where I'll take one day of rest before Mrs Gorp drives by Bob People's place and kicks me out of my own pickup truck tomorrow. It's been a very good ride across the southern USA and now it's time to pick up on my '08 nobo thru hike of the AT. I'll be back to keeping my journal everyday again....just the way I was for the first part of the year on my walk. I wonder if there is still any snow left out there like there was sooooo long ago when Lone Wolf and Vera picked me up near Kincora. ;-) Thanks to everyone who helped Mrs Gorp and me along the Southern Tier Bicycle Trail....and thanks for any offers of help. Wish we could have seen everyone of you. A special thanks to my favorite bicycling partner, Mrs Gorp.......it's been A LOT OF FUN!!!!!!!!!