Budget Cycling On The Back Roads Of Florida
Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, September, 1998 by Herb Hiller
This is a different Florida, of farm-to-market roads, rural as a patchwork quilt, where the Hallelujah farm & Tractor Service sits between two churches and herds of cows stand still as logos on milk jugs.
The forest rises high and dark. Early sun fractures the cold. The ride is an off-road cyclist's dream, a trail the scant width of a lone rider, trimmed more than cut through the woods, visible only by markers and hunch. It emerges, after an interlude of almost effortless pedaling, at a river of whitewater rapids. This is a different Florida, a place where frost glistens on winter mornings and the Sunshine State seems as distant as a northern airport. Hundreds of miles of the woodland trails I've just described trace the Suwannee River Valley. It's a north Florida region of farm-to-market roads, rural as a patchwork quilt, where the Hallelujah Farm & Tractor ...