Tuesday February 3, 2015
We were up by 7:00 am and Fred had made us a lovely breakfast of eggs, potatoes and sausage with pancakes and coffee. That kept us going for a while.
As I was getting the water bottles ready I noticed what looked like frost on the truck windows! It had dropped to 0 degrees during the night, but the sun was out and it felt nice. I decided not to put my leggings on, which turned out to be a mistake. Once we started cycling at 8:45 we realized it was still cold. Before we got to the end of Fred’s street we had switched our light jackets for our heavier wind/rain jackets and put on our gloves. It was 3 degrees centigrade and we had a head wind. The wind continued for most of the ride but changed direction occasionally from a head wind to a slight side wind and back again. The wind dropped the temperature by about 2 degrees. The temperature just made it over the 10 degree mark during our ride! I was very proud of Ralf he didn’t complain once about the temperature. At least it wasn’t raining.
The road was straight and flat with a wide paved shoulder, again the vehicles moved into the other lane when they could. A few even honked at us and gave us a friendly wave. The ride was a bit boring, although I did see a couple of hawks and what I think was a little sparrow hawk. The only “Town” we went through was Otters Creek, it had a post office, a gas station with a café attached and that was it – don’t blink because you would miss it. Larry told us yesterday that if there was a post office in the Town, the Town would still be on the National Maps, if the post office closed down, your town was erased from the maps! how sad is that.
We arrived in Chiefland, tired and cold. We booked into a Days Inn, we have realized that we will have problems camping until the temperature warms up. Our tent and camping gear is not cold weather rated. The sleeping bags are only good to 2 degrees and the tent is a 3-season tent. Although we are not camping we are eating in the motel to save money – this motel had a microwave and a fridge.
I hope the temperature warms up soon. No photos – fingers too cold to take photos!