Year 4 - Day 3 - Crescent City to Deltona FL

What an interesting day today! It all started with an exceptional sunrise this morning. Check this out!

We were prepared for rain as the weather forecast said up to 55% chance of rain in both the departing town and the arriving town.  We experience several brief periods of light rainfall, but no long periods of rain at all.  We stopped a couple times and prepared for rain, covering our phones and bags, but all in all very unnecessary, thank goodness! 

Temps were in the 80’s again. Well above the average temps for this time of year! 

An interesting fact for today! Bob likes to point out Porta Potties as he is generally the one who needs one! So as we went along early in the ride, he noted a proliferation of these appliances.  We were traveling through nursery farms, growing plants for sale, and fern growing farms, for greenery used in live flower arrangements. 

The ferns are grown under these heavy black canvas covers, I assume to provide shade for the ferns, generally a shade loving plant. 

Many of these farms use large quantities of migrant labor and as such have to provide toilet resources for these workers. We counted 17 portable toilets in the first 17 miles of our travels today. And we even saw some portable porta potties, ones on wheels!

Further down the road, we stopped for a break at the Barberville Pioneer Settlement. Shucks we just missed their pioneer days celebration last weekend!

We experienced many miles of rural roads today along with many miles on trails. The rural roads were all paved except for about one mile of packed sand! We were a little apprehensive when hitting the sand, hoping we were not going to share the experience from last year where the sand was so deep we had to walk our bikes for several miles!

We passed through DeLeon Springs. This town must have had a plethora of tornados spring up as the result of hurricane Milton. There was debris stacked all along the backroad we traveled. We also passed a large fenced-in land area where this debris was being collected. The stacks of debris was so large it was almost unbelievable. It is great service that local governments provide by hauling away this debris and grinding it into mulch.

We stopped for lunch at Firehouse subs in Deland.  Several photos of Deland are below.

   

The bike paths in this area a really well engineered! Capable of handling bikes up to 40 tons!

This bike path actually parallels a high voltage transmission line. The bike path doubles as a travel path for the line trucks! Just struck me funny that the path is labeled with a very large weight limit!

We crossed over as high speed commuter rail line. I am told it is the only private rail line in the US. This was our highest climb today.

The SunRail service

After crossing the tail bridge, we noted 9 turtles, we think these are gopher tortoise, along the trail. A couple photos and a video are below.

Just as I finished videoing this tortoise, I looked up and saw a medium size hawk cross the trail. It had a barred tail. We think this may have been a short-tailed hawk, but not certain! We also encountered several bear crossing signs on our travels today. Bears in Florida? Who would have thunk! Gary saw a flock of wild turkeys in a yard not far from our finishing point today. This morning soon after departing we saw a large number of peacocks. Several times throughout the day we saw groups of large gray birds with red caps on their heads, Sandhill Cranes, unique to Florida. Not to mention skinks (lizards) all over! I am really surprised at the amount of wildlife that we have seen in Florida.   

Sandhill Cranes feeding along the trail.

And we wished Gary a happy birthday with red velvet cupcakes courtesy of Dan. Thank Dan!

Today we rode 59 miles, with an elevation gain of 1,452 feet. Total for this year’s ride so far, 172.6 miles, 3,140 feet elevation gain. The totals for the ECG are 2,654.6 miles and 78,771 feet of elevation gain. 

Thanks for hanging in there for a long post today!