4/27 - THE FINAL DAY - Hawthorne to St. Augustine, FL

Mike & Russ in the Atlantic Ocean. Mike is drinking the cider.

The 4 of us at the end of the journey!

The view from Lions Bridge

Heading over Lions Bridge to the finish at Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL.

The day started out great! We drove back to Hawthorne and Mike, Denise & Russ started the ride from there with Mike Yahooing along the way. They rode thru Hawthorne, Melrose, Putnam Hill, Grandin, Florahome, Carraway, to Palatka. I was to drive to Palatka, Fla. After they took off I noticed that the turn indicators didn't work if you were stepping on the brake. I got to Palatka w/o incident, but was looking for a WalMart and took a wrong turn. It turned out that I had to go at least 25 miles before I could safely turn around. I did pass one spot at about mile 15, but had a vehicle so close that if I stepped on the brake to turn in they wouldn't see the turn indicator. All I saw on this adventure was one wild turkey and lots of people hand harvesting cabbage. Mike called and they were almost to Palatka and I wasn't. They directed me to where they were and we then had to deal with the turn indicators. This dampened Mike's spirit somewhat, but the nice people at a Goodyear shop took us right in and fixed yet another problem caused by the person who hooked up our braking system. Denise took over the driving and we rode from Palatka thru Hastings, Racy Point which had very nice homes along the St. Johns River, Riverdale and to Molasses Junction which was where we were to call Denise so she could head back from the state park to meet us so we could all ride to Anastasia State Park and the beach at St. Augustine together. Molasses Junction consisted of one small store with a very friendly cat that greeted us. As we left the store we had the best, almost the only, tail wind of the entire trip! Denise reported that she couldn't check in to the state park as the reservations were in Mike's name and she didn't have picture ID so she parked in the day use parking lot and headed our way. We met up w/Denise and rode over Lions Bridge to the Atlantic Ocean at Anastasia State Park together. We had champagne and sparkling cider as we took pictures of the end of a great adventure! 50 total days of riding and over 3,100 miles for Mike and Russ. I had approximately 1,354 miles. This, unfortunately is not the end of the story!