February 19, 2019 - Milton to De Funiak Springs, Florida

Day 50 Cross Country Bike Trip

The rain that started last night continued and was a downpour about 7:30 this morning. We hung out until almost 8:30 when it was starting to let up before Tobey decided it was time to “do this thing!” It was about 48 degrees, rain, and headwinds 15-20 mph – UGH – but he was still smiling as he got started. He usually has a pack on the back rack of his bike to hold a spare tube, tools, battery charger, and snacks. Today he put his phone, battery, wallet and snacks in Ziploc bags in his pockets to avoid a soaked pack.Fortunately, the rain stopped around 10 am so he only had the cool temperature and wind to contend with the rest of the day.Tobey rode about 6 miles past De Funiak Springs before calling it a day. After loading the bike we headed back to town where we will spend the night.

We drove to De Funiak Lake to check it out. The spring-fed lake is in the center of the historic district. The woman at the museum told me it is 60 feet deep and one of the two almost perfectly round spring-fed lakes in the world!

Sitting next to the lake is the Chautauqua Hall of Brotherhood. The original Chautauqua Institution was founded in 1874 in western New York on Lake Chautauqua as a vacation school for Sunday School teachers. The first Florida Chautauqua was held on the banks of Lake De Funiak in 1885 making it the second Chautauqua founded in America. The Hall of the Brotherhood originally had an auditorium seating 4000 people which was completed in 1910! By the early 20th century the national Chautauqua movement had declined and the Florida Chautauqua closed in 1920. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, but in 1975 a hurricane destroyed the auditorium wing and severely damaged the rest of the structure. It is currently under an ongoing restoration process. This is the street-side view of the building.This is a view of the building from the lake.Seven hundred Florida teachers and administrators met here in 1886 for an intensive training in subject matter. Many of the early teachers were "mere grammar school grads”! This was the beginning of the Florida Education Association. In 1890 a separate black teachers association was formed. The two organizations merged in 1975.

We were greeted by several different ducks on our walk down to the lake. None of them seemed afraid of us. I guess they were begging for handouts, but we didn’t have any.I visited the small museum on the opposite side of the lake. It had some nice artifacts from the area dating back to the mid 1800s. I especially liked this quilt made from fertilizer bags!I thought Tobey might want to trade his Fuji touring in for this bike, but he didn’t think so!While Tobey rested, I took the 1-1/4 mile walk around the lake. There were many beautiful homes on the streets surrounding the lake. I could imagine sitting on the veranda sipping lemonade on a warm spring afternoon!One house had this huge Southern Magnolia tree in the front yard. The sign on the tree estimates the age to be 100+ years old. The other statistics were 52’ high, spread of 78’ and trunk circumference of 13-1/2”. That is one big tree!The last building on my walking tour was the Walton-De Funiak Library.  It opened in 1887 and is also located on the shores of Lake De Funiak.Tobey’s ride today was 57.6 miles. This is the link to today’s ride: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/31814683.

This is a link that will show all of Tobey’s route so far. https://ridewithgps.com/events/71165-tobey-s-coast-to-coast-ride-2018-2019

On the left side of the map, it shows day by day stop and start points so you can look at each day’s route.

OR you can scroll to the bottom of the day-to-day and there is a box that says “Show all on Map”. If you click that, it will change the map view to show all days traveled so far (but be prepared for a short pause as takes a while for the file to load).