Day 49 – Ferry, Florida, and Sugarcane Jane

Miles Completed: 59.1

Cumulative miles: 2617.9

Miles to St Augustine: 481

Today we rode from Dauphin Island, AL to Pensacola, FL. Florida is the eighth and final state of this journey. But we still have almost 500 miles to ride in Florida to reach St Augustine.

Let’s go back to this morning. Our plan to get off Dauphin Island was to take the ferry across Mobile Bay to Fort Morgan. Our campground was very close to the ferry, so we rode over and caught the 9:30 ferry ride. The ferry was about 5 miles and took about 40 minutes. It was a lot of fun and an interesting change of pace. Once across Mobile Bay, our bike ride for the day started.

We rode on the barrier islands of Alabama and worked our way back to the mainland. We had good roads and lots of bike paths, especially through Gulf Shores. Gulf Shores had a lot of nice communities, homes, and golf courses. After Gulf Shores came Orange City, AL and that’s where all the high rise condos and resorts started and continued into Florida. The locals call it “the wall” because there are so many tall buildings along the coast.

At the Florida-Alabama border, we stopped at a bar called Flora-Bama. It was right on the state line. It was huge and had multiple rooms and outside decks. There were two live shows going on and it was Thursday afternoon! The main bar room had an Alabama-based duo playing called Sugarcane Jane with husband and wife team Anthony Crawford and Savana Lee. Crawford was an amazing guitar player and he had toured with Neil Young, Steve Winwood, and Dwight Yoakam. He is a prolific songwriter with over 400 songs to his credit and several recorded by major artists.

We watched Sugarcane Jane for over an hour but missed their last two songs because we got “kicked out” of the bar because of fire code regulations. So back to our bikes to finish the ride to Pensacola.

We are staying in a church hall tonight, had Mellow Mushroom pizza for dinner, and finished the night at the Odd Colony brewery which was next door to the church. Another fun day.