Bristol and it’s supply of convenience stores and restaurants was perfectly positioned for a lunch stop before we set out across the Apalachicola River bridge. The river is the time zone divider, so we walked into the Central zone here. The bridge is almost 2 mile long, and has a nice wide pedestrian walkway separated from the high speed traffic by a concrete divider. It was a fairly relaxing pleasant walk and I even took a short break in the middle of it, but I still made it to the other side before I'd set off! Right as we arrived at the edge of Blountstown a couple of Air Force jets flew over quite low, and following the road. My friend Marti works for the Chamber of Commerce here, and we were sure she had laid on the "fly by" to welcome us to town. It turns out she didn't actually do that, but she did meet us at the railway depot armed with a couple of ice cold sodas. That's even better.
Through Blountstown the trail is on the newly opened paved bike trail. I'd walked this several times this past summer during the inaugural hike/bike event for the opening of the rail trail, but I didn't bail out and make Ian hike it alone. After Blountstown is an entirely different beast: Roadwalk on a very busy two lane highway with only a 2 foot blacktop edge and little or no grass available to take refuge on, only water filled ditches. We walked close together and against traffic for safety, but it was really quite harrowing seeing how little attention and space drivers give pedestrians. The majority of the Saturday morning traffic appeared to be grey haired old ladies who had no idea what to do when they saw a hiker, except ignore them and look straight forward, or soccer moms in SUVs and talking on cell phones. Add to that a smattering of teenagers, trucks towing boats, etc and it amounted to a constant parade of high speed vehicles riding the white side line of the road. In three ahours of almost constatnt traffic I noticed 4 vehicles that actually pulled over the center line to give us a little space. They all got a wave of thanks, I almost got a stiff neck from shaking my head at the remainder.The road was full of roadkill, including a deer, a fox, a rat, someone’s ex family Labrador pet, several cats, a raccoon and some unitendifiables. I’m just glad we got off the road without adding to the list. In addition to the roadkill, Ian found a wallet on the roadside. It looked like it had been lost fairly recently. It contained no cash, but someone’s license, credit cards, social security card, etc., and some nitro glycerin medication. Shortly after finding it we passed an older gentleman cutting grass, who looked about the same age as the woman on the DL. Ian asked him if he knew where the address was, and the man actually knew the lady, and promised to get the wallet to her that afternoon.
Fortunately it was only 8 miles before we turned off the busy highway onto quieter roads with a wider grassy area to give us more room to parallel the road. A couple of cars actually pulled over to ask what we were doing. Only one vehicle was aware there was a trail here. That road took us over some high (for Florida) hilly country and we had some quite extensive views over the hills and forests of north Florida for the past couple of days. Now we're at the Scott Rd trailhead for the Econfina WMA. We'll only be off the roads for a couple of days, but we'll take any real trail we can get.
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