day 5: Marianna to DeFuniak Springs, FL

The Faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

Lamentations 3:22-23

76.75 miles – 2,126 ft climb

Tonight we are staying at a wonderful RV “Resort” but sadly the internet is very slow and I can not upload the pictures right now because it’s taking forever and I am seriously about to fall asleep. I mean come on, watching Bruce ride 75 miles is enough to wear me out.

We were pleased to be able to make it to DeFuniak Springs today. Apparently the flooding is receding pretty quickly. We will be able to make it all the way to Pensacola tomorrow and then on to Mobile on Sunday. We did see more flooding along the side of the roads today than before. Maybe because we passed over several rivers.

One exciting fact about today’s ride. We crossed our first time zone. We started in Eastern time zone and are now in Central. Bruce is going strong. At the end of the day I always ask him, “How are you doing?” and expect some answer like, “whew! I am SO tired!” But instead I always get something like, “great! It was a good day!” or “I killed it today. I had a big tail wind.”

My favorite thing about this trip is all of the genuinely nice people that we have met. In parking lots, on walks and in all the RV parks we have met the best people. And this park is no exception. I wish we were staying here longer because I’d love to have the chance to get to know them better. On the ride to DeFuniak Springs today, Bruce ran in to (no, not literally!) a man who had biked to Houston to see his mom and was now on his way back home. He had just a regular ol’ bike that was pretty old and loaded with stuff. Bruce thought he said he had been riding since June. He had no biking gear (I personally can’t imagine biking that far without padded pants – owie!) and wore Army fatigues and lace up boots. They chatted a bit and Bruce bought him lunch. Then they both headed off in their opposite directions.

As I’m sure you weather watchers are aware, there is another tropical storm in the Gulf that may be heading to Texas or Louisiana in the next few days. We will be watching that as well.

Since this was a short day, only 75 miles, we were able to meet for lunch in DeFuniak Springs. We stopped in a cute little shop called Nooks & Crannies and bought a few things before lunch. Unfortunately the places we were looking at for lunch had either gone out of business due to being forced to close for Covid or they were too high end for a biker wearing spandex. We ended up getting a great pizza at Hungry Howies, a place recommended by a kid we talked to on the street.

I can’t wait to show you the pictures from this place. It really is beautiful. I put some videos on instagram brucepamc2c. I promise I will figure out how to add videos here and load some soon. Maybe in Mobile because I am counting on good internet at the Marriott.

When we were sitting in the RV, we kept hearing these clunks above us. It wasn’t raining. I thought maybe it was in the pipes (do RVs have pipes?) or air conditioning or something. Then the light bulb went off in my brain. I remembered that we were parked under a tree. It was squirrels dropping nuts on the roof.