March 4-5, 2018. In Florida.

Yesterday, March 4, Dianne and I drove an hour and a half to get to the Withlacoochee Trail. We had plans to meet Tom there to ride; it's near where he is staying this week. We also invited Stan and Barbara, friends from here in Palm Harbor. We all met at Ridge Manor, about 6 miles from the southern terminus of the trail.

We'd planned to ride 40 miles, but ended up at almost 50 miles! This is a true Rails to Trails trail: the terrain around us was hilly, but the trail was relatively flat, as it had to be for the trains that used to run here. We stopped at a little diner for lunch, then continued on to Inverness, where I took the photo of the caboose. Tom tried out a recumbent bike with a headrest--perfect!

We turned around at Inverness and rode south, back to Floral City where we stopped for strawberry shortcake.

We finished our ride back where we started. We were all ready to be done by then!

March 5: this morning it was a bit chilly--the air temperature was 53 degrees when I jumped into the pool. The photo below shows what the pool looked like when I was done--there were no other swimmers!

I was also the only one in the spa. After my 15 minutes of hot tub time I read my book until Dianne was done playing tennis. We decided to have sort of a rest day today--after our morning routines we played Scrabble most of the rest of the day. It feels like vacation!