Tag: Georgia

Day 3: 72 miles from Jekyll Island to St. Mary’s, Georgia

The day’s highlights: a rail trail and a “submarine”.

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Today’s highlights: the Georgia Coast Trail in Woodbine, the “submarine” outside a military base and tagging along with Brent for his talk about the East Coast Greenway to about three dozen people at a meeting of a military officers association in St. Mary’s. Only a few of them may want to get on their bikes, but they certainly could appreciate the dollars from filling around 30 rooms at a locally owned, non-chain motel.

Once again, worries about the weather were unfounded. No rain. We finally got the sun and heat we were expecting (while there’s snow in the forecast at home — glad to be missing that!)

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Day 2: 54 miles from Hinesville to Darien, Georgia, plus 14 miles around Jekyll Island

No rain .. yay! Today topped expectations in many ways.

4467D632-D9F9-421E-8E22-20F22DD78B28The word of the day is lollygagging.

Lollygagging while writing the day’s blog entry, of course. But also lollygagging a bit during the 54 miles we rode during the morning.

Lollygagging, as the Brit learned this morning, is a southern way of saying dawdling. Can I explain that five ways to Sunday?

Today’s biking exceeded expectations. The rain we were expecting to wake up to never materialized. The stretch of Highway 17 turned out to be pretty harmless. And we had a vehicle keeping traffic off our backs while we backtracked a bit from our hotel in Hinesville to get back on the East Coast Greenway

Continue reading “Day 2: 54 miles from Hinesville to Darien, Georgia, plus 14 miles around Jekyll Island”

Day 1: 46 miles from Savannah to Hinesville, Georgia

Where’s that southern heat? And here’s the scoop on alligator meat.

868732AE-71FF-4999-8DF7-D0E28B806485Take a look at how we’re all dressed in this year’s group photo, taken mid-morning in Savannah: long sleeves all around, and even some tights. So much for the warm southern weather we’d been expecting!

And given that it’s Veterans Day, we took time to call out the four vets in our group:

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Day 0: Exploring Savannah ahead of a weeklong bike ride

The annual Week-A-Year bike ride along the East Coast Greenway starts Sunday. Some of us couldn’t wait.

3A30EF1C-CF41-407C-9CF8-47A2336F5B7DAnother adventure on the East Coast Greenway begins Sunday. About 40 of us will spend the week biking from Savannah to Titusville, Florida. But some of us couldn’t wait, so we rode through Savannah and out to the giant Bonaventure Cemetery, of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” fame.

My fellow riders seemed more intent on finding the grave of Johnny Mercer, founder  of Capitol Records. He’s also the great-grandson of Hugh Mercer, a Confederate general who in turn was the grandson of the General Hugh Mercer killed at the Battle of Princeton during the Revolution. Somehow New Jersey is never far away!

I do love learning bits of history on bike rides, and there’s  more Revolutionary War history in Savannah. The Siege of Savannah in 1779   is a mystery to me, something not taught in U.S. History classes. I learned of the contribution of Haitians and the death of Count Pulaski (remembered through New Jersey’s Pulaski Skyway).

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Biking another segment of the East Coast Greenway, this time in Georgia and Florida

I’m heading out soon on a bike ride that is another installment of thhe East Coast Greenway Alliance’s Week-A-Year ride on track to reach Key West in 2019.

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Looking for No. 6

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be pedaling out of Savannah, Georgia, headed south for around 300 miles on our bicyles. We’ll follow the East Coast Greenway for six days, to the trail town of Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral, where we will play on the seventh day.

Once again, our route will be a mix of trails away from traffic (sometimes lined with Spanish moss), quiet roads, roads with bike lanes or shoulders — and some not-great stuff, like more of U.S. 17, our nemesis last year. That’s the reality of creating a 3,000-mile route down the East Coast that goes through cities, rather than opting for the middle of nowhere to avoid anything difficult.

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