Wild and Crazy day to Madison, Fl

What a morning...it was crazy!! It didn't rain during the nite but at dawn it started to rain lightly. There was a few of us drinking coffee and Bubba took us to breakfast instead of fixing it because of the rain. When we got back from an All you can eat pancakes place - it started to rain and so we hurried and put our bags in the truck...Thank Goodness!!! For the next 2 hours it poured, the lightening was unbelievably close - like one hit on the other side of the tents!!! When I say poured I mean POURED!!! Then on the radio they had spotted a tornadoe 3 miles from us - exactly where Mike and I ate lunch. They were telling everyone to take shelter!!Bubba had scouted out a place for us to go if we needed it but we didn't and we all sat under the awnings and waited for the rain to stop... it became a small lake while we waited - unbelievable!! Finally it was over and we were able to leave at 10 am.

Jim from the Tallahasee bike club took us through the town and we made a stop at this 300-500 year old Oak tree. It was awesome - my picture doesn't do it justice but maybe you can get a feel for it - the limbs are humongus and actually some of them lay on the ground.

We rode through the most beautiful road - a canopy of trees from both sides of the road - shading the road for miles.. absolutely the most beautiful road I've ridden on...Just lovely!!!

We stopped in Greenville, the birthplace of Ray Charles. They have a statue of him in the park - they did a great job on it with a plaque describing his life there.

Leaving Greenville we knew it would rain again so we pedaled and hoped that it would wait until we got to camp. Not to be... we were a couple of miles from camp when the lightening and thunder started and it just poured buckets. The sag was waiting for us to pick us up but Mike and I decided to ride the last 1 1/2 miles to camp. Soaked and praying I wouldn't get hit by lightening! We made it! I'm a little crazy cuz other than the lightening I was enjoying the downpour. All is well that ends well and it did!!

We're on an 80 mile ride tomorrow to High Springs with a layover day...