January 16th - Biking

The local Chamber of Commerce publishes a magazine called “The Catch” and they advertise it as “Visitor Information Caught Daily and Served Fresh”. One item explains perfectly the reasons that we choose to spend our winters in southwest Florida.

 

 

We like this directional sign. It shows Washington, D.C. to be 1,049 miles away. We drove 1,125 miles from home to our condo in Crown Colony.

 

 

It was 69° at 9:00 this morning, but we were expecting warmer temperatures as the day went on. It was mostly cloudy and after the sun came out, it felt very nice. Cordell remarked that it was fairly easy to tell what time people got up and about today by just looking at how they were dressed. He surmised that the ones wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts were the early risers like us. And the others who were dressed in shorts must have slept in.
 

There are really a lot of nice bike routes in this area and buses and trolleys that are equipped with easy to use bike racks. Bicyclist not only have use of specifically marked bike trails, but they can also ride on bike lanes, shared use paths and wide curb lanes as well as paved shoulders.
 

Many of the bike trails have geocaches hidden along them and since there is usually no convenient parking for vehicles, they are best accessed by either walking or riding bikes. Today, we loaded our bikes and rode along a trail on Summerlin Road which is named for Jake Summerlin, the "King of the Cracker Cowboys", who by the age of 40 was one of the wealthiest of the Florida cattle barons.

 

 

 

We pedaled 2.3 miles roundtrip and found this to be a very busy trail. There were people walking, biking, roller blading and we even saw a man driving a golf cart along with way. What we found interesting about the geocaches on this trail was that they were hidden in different type of trees, including a

 

live oak,

 

 

 

silver button wood,

 

 

 

holly,

 

 

 

key palm,

 

 

 

 

satinleaf,

 

 

 

 

and the gumbo-limbo, comically referred to as the Tourist Tree because the tree's bark is red and peeling, like the skin of sunburnt tourists.

 

 



After we finished the bike trail, we drove a short ways to Bunche Beach on San Carlos Bay.

 

This beach is named in honor of Dr. Ralph Robert Bunche who was the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In December of 1949, the beach was dedicated as the beach for blacks.

 

 

 

While looking for a geocache that is located off one of the trails, I saw a tree crab.