Sand Trap? Death Trap (USA Day 164)

After writing last night’s blog, I sat up in the darkness playing a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps with the family of racoons. I’d turn off my head lamp, get on with some bits on my laptop, then flick it on to find half a dozen of the masked naughties all around the camp. Six points for me. They’d freeze, slowly turn, and slink off, disappointed. A minute later, the same would happen, with all the racoons in different places. If I turned on the light and found no racoons, or if the shuffling noise came actually from an armadillo, the racoons scored a point. I increasingly grew more paranoid and, having gone on a bit of a tilt and lost many rounds in a row, decided that the racoons had gone to another campsite and toddled off to the tent.

The second I closed the zip, the racoons were ripping away at our bags. I guess they got the overall victory, but fortunately for us their prize was only pride. Our bags remained intact, and after I dragged them all inside the tent, we could sleep in peace.

Waking before dawn, we retraced our steps along the boardwalk to the pier to watch the day begin, but found it populated entirely by vultures. As part of their morning routine they’d flapped, drib by drab, down off the tree and were vying for position on the bannisters and posts where we’d planned to sit. It didn’t matter, of course. We kept a polite distance and watched them go about their day, swaggering about with that hokey wing-raised two-step, sliding gormlessly off the tin roof and flapping away again to steal another vulture’s post, grunting or squawking or…woofing? Their grumbly low-breathed huff sounded just like a softly spoken dog. After half an hour or so, the vultures acclimatised to our presence and spread out until the closest were in touching distance. They pecked away at the metal bolts of the boardwalk, hoping for a delicious iron filing. Alligators and turtles slid by, the storks flew out as one for their day’s work, and enormous grey sturgeon swum about in the shallows.

Seeing all these busy bodies do their thing made us feel quite frankly ashamed, so we did the same and cycled off to our next spring. Forty miles of headwind awaited us, broken up by a hot lunch of salisbury steak and mashed potato (accent on the ash. It tasted awful) courtesy of a local deli.

Google maps threw us down a horrible sand road, which ran through the middle of a dairy farm which smelled of warm vinegar and cheese rind. After almost skidding off, we climbed off to walk the bikes, and were approached by a man in a truck.

“You folks jus’ passin’ through?”

“Actually, we wanted to purchase some milk,” I wanted to say. Obviously, I didn’t. I chose, “Yeah.”

“You know this is a private road?”

I looked at my map. It wasn’t. It was a Florida County Highway. We were fine. “Google sent us. Sorry.”

“You can’t be here,” he said. “But follow this road up here and you’ll find Highway 26. That’ll take you to Trenton.

“Thanks?” I wondered. That had been our plan already.

“Lotta traffic on this road,” he said.

“This private road?”

He followed us in his truck for a while as we toiled through the deep sand. People are lovely, aren’t they.

In the last six miles of our ride, we saw a bear’s head by the side of the road. In a state where camp sites don’t have bear boxes and we’ve given away our bear spray, this wasn’t the most encouraging head to encounter. However, we assumed it wouldn’t be posing us a problem due to its lack of spleen or legs.

Gilchrist Blue Springs State Park approached, but turning off the highway, we discovered yet another sand road. Instantly, Amy skidded off, grazing the back of her ankle, and I went soon after. Given that we’d spoken to a ranger at this very park about riding our bikes into the park, I’d have assumed he might mention this death trap of a sand trap, but no. We arrived at the office about half an hour later, exhausted from dragging our useless bikes along a mile of sand. Remember, walking a bike through sand was what had caused Amy her initial ankle injury. The ranger was…unapologetic.

“Look, I’m not accusing y’all of lying, but…” is a sentence that normally precedes an accusation of lying, “I tell all the rangers to mention the roads to bikers.

“Good for you,” Amy said. “Shame nobody told us.”

Once inside, the spring is pretty amazing. It’s clearer than Manatee, if possible, and dotted with small, inquisitive fish who swim up to your feet and then decide better of it. You can walk up to the ledge, beyond which the floor drops out to a mind-bogglingly deep chasm from where the water emerges. The caves, we’re told, go to Georgia. Last night some Scuba Divers went down, we’re told. We’re yet to learn if they reached Georgia.

As it got dark, we set up a table of snacks, compressed cheese and our final escape room. Apart from all the sand, this place is wonderful.