Another day on bicycles. After the wonderful breakfast that Hazel prepared for us, we got going at a great pace. Light winds, gorgeous views of the water and amazing homes to look at. Checkpoint was next to the water – Mexico Beach –and Rochell encouraged all of us to get in, which a bunch of us did. Getting bike shorts totally wet maybe wasn’t the smartest thing to do, it made for interesting riding, but it was well worth it.
A subdivision called “Watercolor” caught my eye, it was so “designed” it almost looked like a fake village, we called it “toon town.” Next to it was Seaside, another “planned community” from the 70’s. Cliff, the architect on our trip, said it was one of the first of its kind in the country, the subject of many architectural conferences years ago, now it just looked like expensive vacation homes.
We held out to have lunch until what we saw a sign that we both thought said “The Spicy Poodle” – really it was noodle – we thought it was funny, so we stopped for lunch. Inside we ordered pizza and while we were waiting they brought us some bread with some really spicy dipping sauce. It was so good I had to be careful not to keep gobbling away and save room for the main course. The restaurant was so cold I had to go out to my bike to get long sleeves to wear – then I went into the bathroom – it was freezing! They could have stored ice cream in there! After eating I was glad to get out into the hot sun and back on my bike so I could warm up.
The rest of the way was crowded with traffic. Panama City is a major college spring break town, it was full of all sorts of tacky places and scooter rentals. We were going at a quick pace and rode through all of it as fast as possible. We had a lot of campsites to pick from, most of our group had packed in close to the baggage truck and the bathrooms. Bob and I picked a space ‘far from the maddening crowd’ and had plenty of peace and quite. I rode back into town for a bottle of wine to have with our dinner, catered for us out at camp.
75.1 miles