Other News :: Bike Florida launches year-round touring program
Bike Florida launches year-round touring program
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7/2/2009-Bike Florida launches year-round touring program
For the first time in 25 years, year-round long-distance bicycle touring will return to Florida October 10-16 when Bike Florida leads the inagural tour in its fall-winter program.
Co-founders of the modern-day Florida bicycling movement in 1979, Linda Crider and Herb Hiller will lead the tour.
Tours will initially cover the 260-mile St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop, a richly historic route that includes America's oldest city, St. Augustine; the Merritt Island and Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuges, state parks, country museums and beach swimming, with water taxi and houseboat connections.
"For too long there's been no organized comfortable cycling way to discover backroads Florida," said Crider, founder of non-profit Bike Florida, announcing the program. "These tours are organized for that, but also for totally sociable fun."
Crider helped revive the advocacy not-for-profit Florida Bicycle Association (FBA), and 30 years ago, when working for Florida Govenor Bob Graham, adopted Hiller's program of rural north Florida tours to broaden the base of state tourism. (That program has morphed into today's not-for-profit Suwannee Bicycle Association.)
The new tours are fully supported with luggage-carrying support vehicles, on-road guides, maps and cue sheets. They include overnights in B&Bs, homestays and motels. Also all breakfasts, sit down dinners, interpretive programs and more.
Tours begin and end in Palatka, a St. Johns River town with Amtrak service. Bike Florida will arrange pick-ups and returns to airports in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach.
By 2013, the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop will become the longest paved, off-road loop trail in the American southeast. That year marks the 500th anniversary of Europe in America. Loop backers include the Florida Wildflower Foundation that will use the Loop to help launch Florida wildflower tourism; the Florida Greenways and Trails Foundation, the St. Johns River Alliance, Trust for Public Land, and FBA.
Additional tours in the first fall-winter schedule include a week-long November tour already booked by donors to the East Coast Greenway Alliance; a four day December tour along a portion of the Loop, and a March week-long camping tour, the so-called mass Bike Florida ride, that annually draws up to 1,000 cyclists.
October's tour is $1,250 per person. For details about this and other Bike Florida tours, contact Interim Executive Director Hope Howland-Cook at 352-224-8601, or log on to their website www.bikeflorida.org
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