Day 15: January 5, 2015 Mainlining Comment via blog

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I spent the night just north of Orlando inside the 'V' formed by the Dixie Highway East Connector and the West Mainline. When I went looking online for a breakfast spot, I found that one of the highest rated was an independent sitting right on that brick paved stretch of the East Connector in Winter Park. At the Briarpatch, the food photo was taken with my phone but I doubt any camera could do justice to that waffle. Plenty of pecans are cooked inside it in addition to the big pile on top. That is pure maple syrup in the cup. Yummy.

I didn't precisely follow the East Connector as I had the day after Christmas but I did make my way to where it connects to the Mainline to begin following the longest length of Dixie Highway that remained undriven by me. Nearly 500 miles of new-to-me Dixie Highway awaited between here and Macon, Georgia. The first picture was taken near Apopka and the second just a few miles further on approaching Highland.

This is the only road signed Dixie Highway that I saw all day. That doesn't mean there aren't others between Orlando and Gainesville only that I didn't see any. The sign is on an approximately one mile long section in the town of Lady Lake, Florida.

The first picture is of Gainesville Road heading north into Reddick. The second is of the awkwardly named NW 44th Avenue Road at Reddick's north edge.

I had never even heard of Micanopy before seeing the sign by the road. Turns out it is Florida's oldest inland town and has a seriously legitimate claim to being, as it describes itself, "the town that time forgot". There are plenty of antique and craft shops and a few cafes in those old buildings and even an inviting bed & breakfast (Herlong Mansion, 4th picture). The town's museum tells its story from the native village that was here long before De Soto's 1539 visit through it being a very hot spot during the Second Seminole War and its transitions from sugar cane to cotton to oranges to lumber and turpentine.

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