There was a chill in the air this morning when I went outside to load my bicycle onto the car’s bike rack, but the sky was a brilliant blue and the weather radar showed an absence of those rough-edged yellow and red and black things which look, lately, like remnants of burnt fried eggs roaming across my iMac’s screen.
West Orange Bikes and Blades hired me to give a two-hour guided bike tour of the Trail from the Killarney Trailhead five miles east to the Winter Garden Heritage Museum and Ms Bee’s Popcorn and Candy Store, and the weather was perfect. I always jump at the chance to share West Orange County’s history with new people, and these conventioneers were a great group to work with
Here’s the gang, laden with popcorn and candy after their long haul.
Their bikes are parked across Plant Street at the Heritage Museum.
They got to see the new History Research and Education Center (our new offices) going up on Plant Street…
… our eastern gateway to the downtown Area…
…the beautifully preserved Edgewater Hotel…
…Centennial Fountain…
… the Garden Theatre, where Carol Lee is starring in Hairspray…
…Splash Park on Plant Street…
…City Hall…
…Brayton, an old community just west of downtown Winter Garden, where a former fertilizer company has been repurposed as Roundtable Productions, a multimedia production company…
…the former South Lake Apopka Citrus Growers Association offices in Tildenville…
…the old SLACGA water tower…
…the Luther Willis Tilden home (c.1910) on Tildenville School Road…
…Lake Brim behind the Tilden home…
…mile marker 801 from Richmond, Virginia, which stood along the old Orange Belt / ACL railroad tracks…
…a home on Oakland’s Tubb Street which began life as boarding house for railroad men when it was built in the late 1880s…
…Historic Town Hall in Oakland, which started out as a bank in 1912…
…and one of the views south of Oakland, former grove land stretching towards Lake Apopka’s south shore. It was a great ride and a great experience and, after I sent them off on their bus and back to the Portofino, I went exploring through some of the groves which still stand between Oakland and Tildenville…
Along the old Tildenville-Oakland Road, you pass through some very old properties…
…and the old road pops you out through here onto Oakland’s Starr Street.
SO… anybody up for a bike tour? There’s so much to see in West Orange County!
What Can I Say ? 