Heritage 441 - 30th Anniversary Planner

The Heritage 441 Run - 30th Anniversary Edition

The Make It To Dublin Route, day one...

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(Saturday, 17 August 2013)
Our adventure begins in Longwood, Florida. Actually, we were planning on leaving from the Wekiva Springs area, in unincorporated Seminole County, just outside of Apopka... but plans change. Because of a recent change in our vehicle situation, Ann is driving over to The Little Grass Shack on Friday to spend the night with me, and we'll leave from there Saturday morning. Our son's girlfriend's PT Cruiser just bit the dust, so she is driving his car to work, while he drives my truck to work, and I drive my parent's truck... it's a long story, one I won't go into here.

Our destination for our previous trip was somewhere near the Great Smoky Mountains, but this time around we're shooting for North Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio with enough time to visit the friends and family we don't see much of these days. I say somewhere near the Great Smoky Mountains because we had a number of destinations, just south of the divide between Cherokee and Gatlinburg. Again, that trip was planned for motorcycles, not Ann's Miata, so the destinations were within a day's ride and motorcycle friendly.

Most of the run on this trip, once we're past Fargo, GA, on historic US441 will be our original route to the Smoky Mountains. Some of the route was 'borrowed' from a gentleman, kind enough to record his travels, on the Galaxieland site, but five years later, it appears that site is now pretty much defunct. At least the travels part of it that is. Sad. He detailed so much of the Americana that we love, places to visit, sites to see. Now it's just car parts for sale, and the rest is lost to time...

We have tried some of the routes he suggested. Some remain untried and are still based on online research. Most are now from personal experience, as my wife and I planned on riding this route for our 25th wedding anniversary in August, 2008, but ended up driving it after my motorcycle blew a head gasket in Ocala, 2 hours into the trip. I won't go much into it, since you can read all about it here, but it set us back a day of travel when it happened. We recovered from it, gracefully, and it taught us a valuable lesson - always have a backup plan. We didn't at the time, but we figured it out in short order.

This time we plan on driving from the start, and as much as wanted to ride, we were still working on taking a day trip on the bikes. We still need to pack light for everything to fit in Ann's Miata, but we can cover more ground with fewer stops, and won't have to worry about the weather or schedules as much. The first leg of our trip would have taken us past Mount Dora, where we may have stopped for breakfast in the past, but the last time we were out that way, the last of our favorite eateries was closed. Damned bankers tanking the economy back in 2008 has taken away much of the Americana remaining! Since this is the very first part of our trip and we're now leaving from Palm Bay, adding another 1½ hours to the trip, we'll bypass US441 through there altogether by getting on the Florida Turnpike near Orlando, taking us directly to I-75.

Since Ocala and Gainesville are usually congested, the route the aforementioned gentlemen suggested took I-75 from Wildwood to Ocala, then hopped onto US27 and headed northwest. To get there from Mount Dora meant going through downtown Leesburg to catch SR44 going west. It intersects I-75 in Wildwood, near the turnpike. We originally thought about a possible side trip past I-75 to Dunnellon and Rainbow Springs, and from there an overnight stay at Plantation on Crystal River. It's not a real plantation house, just a replica, so there isn't any history associated with it. Instead we decided to spend more time in Asheville, NC, so we'll high tail it straight to our stop for the night in Dublin, GA. Not sure if you'd exactly call it "high tailing it" though considering our route...

On our last trip we didn't make it past Ocala the first day, but we planned on bypassing most of Ocala anyway. This time, we head north on I-75 to make good time to Lake City, FL. This is where US441 crosses under I-75, and it should take us about three hours to get there, 4½ from The Little Grass Shack. We get on US441 here, and once we're through the downtown historic district, we're "quickly" be north of I-10, and the Florida - Georgia border. Well, not all that quickly, but this portion of our trip is unexplored territory since last time we bypassed it to make up for missing the first day of travel.

We find that getting through downtown Lake City is more difficult than we thought it would be. Most of the small towns and villages we passed through on US441 on our last trip were just that, small towns and villages. It didn't take that much longer to go through them than around them because they were small. Lake City, not so much. It's congested and slow going. We're wondering if maybe we shouldn't have just gone around all of this as well, as in just continuing up I-75 and then turning east once into Georgia, like we did last time. Patience pays off and we're eventually north of Lake City and all of the hustle and bustle associated with the big city and I-10.

We didn't want to miss out on this leg of the trip this time around since we had to bypass it last time... Not by much, but I think we made up for it in all the back roads driving we did last time, trying to head east and meet back up up with US441. This time we're getting closer and closer to Georgia, but not really seeing much of anything. We're getting hungrier and hungrier too, but still not seeing much of anything. Nothing but 2 lanes of US441 and country roads. We don't know it at the time, but we were following along the Suwannee River, just out of sight to our west. Eventually it's nothing but farmland, without as much as a farmhouse in sight.

So once across the border into Georgia, we see that we really didn't miss much the first time around. I mean there is NOTHING for miles and miles and miles, except for a single line of telephone poles along side the 2 lanes of US441. Those poles eventually disappear too. We're beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea. Had we been on the motorcycles, we wouldn't have had a place to stop, just the ditches on either side. The famous Suwannee River starts north of us in the Okefenokee Swamp, and we cross the river as we finally begin to approach civilization again, coming into the first town in Georgia along the Heritage 441, Fargo, nearly 40 miles north of Lake City.

It's already well past lunchtime by now and we decide it's time to stop at the first (and only) dining establishment we see, the Suwannee River Cafe. Down the street is a caboose, isolated on its own track, left to commemorate a bygone era. This is basically someone's house, converted into a restaurant. We are seated by our friendly waitress and given the menu. That's right, that's an opossum and a racoon on the front. It gets better... On the walls are multiple deer trophies, two on one wall and three on the other. You don't get much more Americana than this!

We are happy to finally be out of the car. Thankfully they don't look very busy. There seems to be a steady stream of folks walking in to pick up their to go orders. Not to the point of people having to stand in line, but frequent enough that there's always someone standing at the counter waiting. That's a good sign. There are a few people sitting here and there, some just coming in the front door, and some just leaving. Everywhere you look there is something to see. I think I'm driving Ann nuts with my constant "look at this here" and "look at that over there"...

The waitress brings our sweet teas and we order pulled pork sandwich platters with fries, beans, and slaw. We continue to glance around, looking here and there, noticing more and more little things that catch our eye. The tea is nice and sweet and fresh brewed. We are waiting on the next brew for refills. When the food arrives, it smells wonderful and we dig in. All I can say is WOW! That was the best homemade BBQ we have ever eaten! Now I don't know if I'd drive all the way there just to have it again, but I do know if you find yourself along the Heritage 441 in Fargo by the railroad tracks, do yourself a favor and stop on in at the Suwannee River Cafe! Be sure to check out their "unofficial" Facebook page!

We make use of the facilities before getting back on the road, and even then the Americana just doesn't stop! An electric hinney wiper of all things! We head back out to the care, full and ready to roll. We get back in the car and head north toward Homerville, Pearson, and Douglas. It's another 1½ hours to Douglas, 2¾ to Dublin, 4½ to Madison, according to Google... Considering we've already been on the road going on 6 hours, it's a good thing we decided to spend the night in Dublin. Ann's ready to be done driving for the day already. I'm wishing we were there already too. But we're on an adventure, and anxious to see what else we missed the first time around, in this case, Homerville and Pearson. Driving through these smaller villages we realize we really didn't miss much the first time around.

Douglas we've already been to, where we called it a day at General Coffee State Park on our last trip. At the time, we thought about staying in the Burnham House, a 19th Century cabin, but instead chose the smaller Hawk's Nest. This trip we're just passing through Homerville, Pearson, and Douglas. Note that heading east from either of Homerville or Pearson puts us in Waycross, where some friends had some property. We thought we'd have a look at one point... not on our itinerary this trip either. We could have made it all the way into Madison, but that added 1½ hours from The Little Grass Shack prompted our stop in Dublin. We have reservations at a Bed & Breakfast there, The Page House. I'll tell you more about it in the next segment.

Trip Pics and Things Remembered

On our entry into Georgia, well, the first town in Georgia, Fargo, we stopped for lunch at the Suwannee River Cafe.

More Americana from the Suwannee River Cafe... stop staring at me when I'm eatin' fellas!