Tuesday June 3, 2008
Scenic Georgia, Florida
In Miami, a dense urban and suburban strip of communities borders the Everglades on the west and the Atlantic on the east. So it’s easy to forget that most of the rest of the country is rural — a web of roads connecting scattered homes, farms, and the occasional small town. This is commingled with lots and lots of largely raw nature, with forests, prairies, rivers, and lakes, many of which look exactly as they have for thousands of years.
Or rather, on some level we’re aware of it. You can’t leave the state via I-95 without driving through stretches of forest, but it’s always seemed like an abstraction to me that way. And of course the best thing about riding a bike, even around the block, is for the slow way you experience your surroundings. Here then, the first of a few slide shows from the trip. I edited out anything with overt traces of humanity, trying to convey the varied and primal nature that’s still out there.
The route I followed started in Savannah and followed Section 6 and Section 7 of the Adventure Cycling Association’s Atlantic Coast series of maps. Through Georgia the rout heads about 60 miles inland from Savannah and meanders through the interior of the state, then follows the coast for most of Florida. Here’s the slideshow.
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Excellent pictures, I’m sure it was a bike trip to remember.
Great pics, I love this area
What beautiful places, A! Thanks for sharing.
Number 7 is exquisite.
Your pictures are almost too beautiful.
I would like to see pictures taken along the way that contrast these picture post card perfect images.
Thanks for taking this trip.
How many days were you actually on the road and how were the drivers treating you and did you encounter any other bike riders?
Did you bring a book?
cheers,
KA
beautiful pictures and very informative, congrats!!
KA~
I’m about to answer all your questions in the next post, except for one:
of course I had a book with me. Dave Eggers’ What is the What, which I purchased specifically for the trip. It was a bit eerie when the plot of the book superficially echoed things that were happening on my trip, but that’s dumb — the thing that I’d stress is that a NOVEL is a great thing to have on ANY trip, because there will always be boring stretches or moments when you need to escape, and nothing is better to escape to then a story that’s already pulling you along (to contrast with a book of short stories).
Also, Dave Eggers is the shit.