We woke up around 7 and were very glad that we had a dry tent to put away this morning. The bikes and our jackets dried out a little over the night, but not completely- but were still much more dry than if we had camped without an overhang. I don't know how much it ended up raining last night, but everything still looked damp this morning. The sky was full of clouds and we were a little worried that we would get rained on again this morning. As we were packing up, some of the church members were arriving for their early morning bible study with the pastor. There were a few familiar faces from last night along with a few new ones. After getting packed, we asked where the closest grocery store was so that we could get some cereal and milk. It was only about a mile away, which is definitely worth the ride just so we don't have to eat oatmeal. We've been carrying the same little carton of oatmeal and sugar for a while now. We should just eat up the last little bit so we don't have to carry it, but it just doesn't sound good. You never know, we may be out of range from a grocery store for breakfast some morning and be glad that we kept it (but that is looking doubtful- after all, we're on the east coast now- there are grocery stores everywhere. After having some cinnamon toast crunch, we headed off to battle the wind for yet another day. Just down the road from where we camped was a bridge that we ended up crossing right into the Tyndall Air Force Base. Boy was it loud there! There were jets doing "touch and go's" where they would come in for a landing, touch and then take right back off. Jet after jet, one right after another. I just couldn't believe how loud it really was. After getting through the part of the base where the school and all the houses were, we were riding out into "the woods". What seemed at the time like an endless line of trees on both sides of the road was what we had to ride in for about 15-20 miles. It was no different that what it was like riding in Canada or parts of Alaska (except with more traffic of course), but for some reason, it felt like it was dragging on forever for me. Although my legs haven't been all that sore, my butt bones have been hurting the last few days. I think more than even sore legs, the butt is the part that is most noticeably sore after taking a couple days off. I'm sure the sore bottom didn't help those trees go by any faster during that section. Eventually we made it to Mexico Beach. A cute little town with a whole bunch of rental homes and units. Right after getting out of that town, we crossed an important line. We were now in the Eastern Time Zone!! It has been so long since we have been the same time as home, in fact since March 19th, 2012! Every day we feel like we are getting closer and closer to home, but now we feel really close (even with just under 2,000 miles to go)! It was nice to be back riding along the water's edge, however that didn't last all that long. Shortly after ten, the road turned away from the water and back into the wind. By the time we made it to Port St. Joe, I was really ready for lunch. I was feeling a little sleepy from the wind, but nothing too bad. I headed into the grocery store, the Piggly Wiggley, and got a couple more things to use in the rest of our salad mix. To go along with our salad, I ended up getting a package of strawberries, too. The strawberries turned out to be a great treat. They were sweet and juicy, perfect strawberries. We ate lunch at a little table under the overhang of the grocery store just in case it were to rain. Luckily for us, those dark clouds went away and the sun came out! We made a quick stop at the McDonald's for a quick internet check before heading off in the sunshine! It warmed right up, to the point that I didn't even need my light jacket. I love this Florida weather!! We still had a head wind, but with the sunshine, the miles seemed to go by a lot faster. We eventually made it to the town of Apalachicola where we stopped at the grocery store and got a box of fudge Oreos for a little treat. Not too long after getting into Apalachicola, my bicycle odometer hit 17,00 miles! Now this bicycle definitely has more miles on it than my road bike did, by about 1,500 miles at least! As we were leaving Apalachicola under the clear blue sky and sunshine, we had a very long bridge to cross. It had to be close to a 5 mile long bridge. When we got to the other side, we were in a little town called Eastport. We thought about camping there, but decided to keep going to the next town of Greenville. As we continued on and got to the point where Greenville should be, we found out it was one of those towns that was nothing more than an intersection of two roads with a couple houses. It looks like we will be continuing on to the next town that was 13 miles away. I wasn't too excited about this since my bum hurt, but Joey was of course happy because he loves getting extra miles. The road all the way there was right near the water. As the sun was setting behind us we trotted along. It was getting close to dark, so we had to put on our tail lights. About 3 miles from getting into the town of Carrabelle, it was dark enough that we needed to put on our headlights too. Luckily this road doesn't have that much traffic, so we were ok. We stopped at the IGA grocery store in town and got some things for dinner. Since we had made it all the way to where Joey wanted to, I got to get anything I wanted for dinner. By that point I was really hungry and was up for a big huge bowl of pasta and sauce. I got a bag of mozzarella cheese, too. We found out that there was a church just down the road a little ways that would probably have some people there since it was Wednesday night. When we found the church, there were a ton of cars there. It turns out they were having a little service and prayer meeting. We parked our bikes outside and went in to listen to the service. Between the service in their prayer group time, we talked to a couple of the "people in charge" about setting our tent up and they didn't have any problem with it. They also suggested setting up underneath the carport just in case it were to rain. I love when people think like we do- those are always our favorite places to camp because then there are no worries! When they broke off into prayer groups, we joined one of them too. It was really nice having a chance to chit chat with some of the members and get a few more prayers for safe travel at the same time. Those are always appreciated. While we were there, we were offered some lasagna that was left over from the dinner they had during their service, but since we had just bought a bunch of food we decided that we would just have that. So nice of them to offer though! As everyone was starting to leave to head home, a couple of people approached us and asked if we would rather camp under a pavilion at the fire hall where there was a bathroom, electricity, and lights. Now the church sounded like a fine place, but that sounded even better! It turns out that the man that was asking was the fire chief as well as one of the sheriff deputies here in town, so we would have no problem camping there as we had his permission. He led us over to the fire hall, which was only a couple small blocks away. It really was perfect. There was some kind of desk/ table thing outside that we were able to move under the pavilion so that we could use that to cook on. As we were making our pasta and sauce, one of the sheriff deputy's drove through just to make sure everything was ok. I am pretty sure that the fire chief gave them a call so they knew we were there. We had our pasta and sauce, and were both really glad that I got the bag of cheese to go in it too. It was SO yummy. We had a sink in the bathroom to clean everything with, which made it really easy. After snacking on a couple more fudge Oreo cookies, we headed to the tent for the night. My legs were feeling a big sore today probably because I tried to ride for part of the day without putting too much pressure on my sore tooshie. Hopefully it will get a little better tomorrow. Our miles totaled 79.38 today. Hopefully we will get a tailwind one of these days so we can have an "easy" 80 mile day!
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