Out Of The Blue (USA Day 165)

We’ve spent far too many days in a row cycling, so for the morning at least it was time to do something entirely different. We hopped in a kayak courtesy of a little shack at our campground and paddled down the swampy channel to the Santa Fe river, for a tour of some hidden springs. The general theme here is that these springs are altogether calmer than the exciting, gaudy and oh-so-stinky Yellowstone ones. They bubble gently, coolly, creating barely a ripple on the surface, but through their crystal clear waters you can gaze down into the cobalt blue caves from whence the water emerges.

We shared the space with hundreds of turtles, sitting sleepily on sticks that protruded the river’s surface. They’d plop into the water at our approach, their yellow underbellies showing as they went, then swim quietly around until we’d passed. Progress upstream was hard enough work, made harder by our shared enthusiasm for steering straight towards low-hanging branches for dangly leaf moments or an immobile round of limbo. The rental was only for two hours, so at some point we gave up and floated downstream, a decidedly easier activity, dipping back into our channel in time to watch the guy who lent us the boat coming out in rather a hurry: somebody had called him out to the river, where the vultures were pecking at a bloated shape a little too human-y for anyone’s liking. Sorry, but there’s no conclusion to this particular story. We didn’t think it right to ask what he found. Let’s assume it was a crudité platter: vultures love those.

Perhaps we’d been putting off leaving because the first couple of miles were sand so deep you could bury your sleeping dad in it and shape his legs like a mermaid. Once we’d made it out of this, we were both exhausted and in need of bed. However, there were miles to cycle and precious few hours in which to do them.

The riding was uneventful enough: we had a burrito? A topless homeless man stopped me at a petrol station and asked me for a ride? We still haven’t climbed any hills since Louisiana.

We arrived in Gainesville at our host’s house longing for a proper shower, and that’s exactly what we got. We ate egg fried rice in an actual indoor place (known as ‘room’) and slept fantastically. It looks like tomorrow will be windy, but I wonder how much that will put us off our goal: we’re about to reach the Atlantic. We’re almost home.