Overnight Cycling Trip | Bike FL 2 CA

Dunnellon, FL <—> Manatee Springs State Park, FL

Bob and I took off from Dunnellon yesterday for an overnight tent camping at Manatee Springs Park. It was a 50+ miles ride each way and pretty flat, no hills.

Everything went well until about 1.5 miles from our camp site after we already entered the park when I got a flat tire, my first flat so far in our training.

The woman staffer at the Park entrance said to watch for the fireflies at night. Manatee Springs is a very nice park and I plan on taking Cheryl and Shadow there sometime. The weather looked dark, there was a forecast for thunder storms, so first we set up our tents.

Campsite, Bike, Tents

It did sprinkle a little but no storm. The park had a clean restroom and hot showers which we enjoyed. After cooking some food we walked around the park and enjoyed the scenery, crystal clear water in the river and watching the wildlife.

Manatee Springs State Park

There is no phone signal there or WiFi. I had used my Spot GPS, set on tracking, so Cheryl could see our progress on her computer. She was able to see that we had reached the park ok. I like using the Spot GPS just for that reason. When you can’t call on the phone to let someone know that you reached your destination, the GPS does it for you. I wrote Cheryl an email on my iTouch, even though I knew I couldn’t send it.

It was getting dark so I went to my tent to settle in for the night. Bob called me and said that the fireflies were out; something so small was a treat for us. The fireflies looked so bright, like little strobe lights. Really neat, I think.

This morning when we got up there were deer walking around, about 50 or 75 feet from our tents. I just love to watch wildlife up close. I grabbed my camera and took some video of the deer as a little boy from another camp site tried to walk up to the deer. Awesome.

After we packed up our gear we headed for Chiefland to get some breakfast. About 25 miles from Dunnellon, halfway there, we stopped for a break and as I was stopping, I couldn’t unclip my foot from the pedal and down I went. I hadn’t done that in awhile, ouch. Good lesson to make me aware to unclip before I stop.

All and all it was a good trip. Great to see my Beautiful Bride and Shadow again.

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Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, “WOW!! WHAT A RIDE TO GLORY!!”

Inverness, FL < — > Hillsborough River State Park, FL

Dick Marr, leader of our group, the Withlacoochee Bicycle RIders, came up with the idea of over an overnight camping trip to Hillsborough River State Park. This would be a great shake down for our upcoming cross country bike ride. It would be a 60 mile one way trip with a couple of hills for fun :-)! We could check to see that we packed everything we will need on our cross-country trip as well as setting up and taking down our tents. Plus the 120 miles in 2 days would be another test of our readiness.

We started, as usual for our Thursday group ride, from Wallace Brooks Park and met for breakfast. The Group then departed north back to Wallace Brooks and Bob, Dick and I headed south for Hillsborough. Jerry, Mari and Mary and Rick hung around to see us off.

Some of the Withlacoochee Bicycle Riders Group

The hardest part of the trip was this hill. It doesn’t look like much from this angle, but it was bad.

"The HILL"

This is where Bob found out his gearing on his bike was not right for our trip. Good to find it now than later. He now has a different bike with the right gearing. Another bad thing about this hill was there was no shoulder and traffic came very close.