Travel Bug: The First Volksmarch On Our Florida Trip

Sunday, November 1, 2020

The First Volksmarch On Our Florida Trip - Saturday, October 31, 2020

Today's drive was pretty short, only 170 miles. We arrived at Ingram's Marina and Campground in Quincy, Florida, at 11:45 a.m. There was plenty of time to set up in our site overlooking the marina, have lunch in the 5th wheel, and then go to Quincy, Florida, to do the 11k (6.8 mile) Volksmarch.

Upon settling into the campground, we explored around the lake and marina. There's a cute office/store and docks for people who enjoy boating. Pontoon and fishing boats looked to be the most popular. The sky was a beautiful blue with clouds starting to come in. This place has not only RV sites, but cabins as well. Down on the dock, there's a fish-cleaning station.

Our campsite for the night.

The marina.

The slips at the marina.

Signs outside the office/store.

Lake Talquin (Talquin is a combo
of Tallahassee and Quincy).

Cormorants.

Lake Talquin.

Anhinga.

Model plane up above their dock.

We're out on the dock, I'm taking photos, and Bob says to me, "Look at that stick in the water."

My reply, "That's not a stick, that's an alligator!" It was eyeballin' us. We don't see many alligators!!!

The 'gator eyeballin' us.

The alligator swam away.
It was about 4' long.

This is the dock where Bob
spotted the 'gator.

The marina from a small bridge by the lake.

The campground -- our 5th wheel
is on the left.

This is our site.

After exploring the campground, we drove 20 minutes to Quincy. The walk box was at a Hardee's restaurant in downtown. After signing in for the walk, we started off going through historic Quincy. It's not a very big town, about 7,000 people, but at one time it was the richest town per capita in the United States. This is hard to believe. Read on to find out why.

Bob and I had not read the history of Quincy, but we speculated about how the town got its wealth when we saw all the beautiful Victorian homes. Our best guesses were cotton or the railroad. It turns out, we were way off. In fact, Quincy has a rather fascinating history.

In its early years, Quincy relied on agriculture to supply local income. In 1922, tobacco farmers had a bumper crop. At the urging of a local banker, Mark Munroe, the farmers invested into shares of Coca Cola Co. He told them to buy as many shares as they could and never to sell them. After ten stock splits, those people who had bought shares and never sold became "Coca Cola millionaires." At one time, the town's residents held two-thirds of all the Coke shares outstanding. Who knew? Wow.

The generosity of the town's Coke millionaires has helped Quincy in many ways:

The Methodist Church was renovated.
The Leaf Theater was restored.
The library was remodeled.
In the 1960s, tuition was paid for local students to go to college.
Christmas presents were bought for the disadvantaged.

Let's go check out what this town has to offer...

It is the county seat of Gadsden County, 20 miles northwest of Tallahassee.

Gadsden County Courthouse,
Quincy, Florida.

We then walked through Historic Quincy, and kept on walking through neighborhoods of fine Victorian homes and more modest houses as well. There were lots of Halloween decorations.

Downtown Quincy.

The company that made
Quincy's residents rich.

Quincy, Florida.

These maps were all around town

Big, beautiful home.

A Little Free Library.

First Presbyterian Church.

Quincy history marker.

The Quincy Academy.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church.

Next, we went up and down hills while looking at lovely homes, Halloween decorations, bird houses, and yard art.

A Colonial with a white pickett fence.

Very nice brick workmanship.

This family went all out
decorating their yard.

I love this weathervane.

Futuristic-looking bird houses.

A beautiful butterfly migrating through.

A Quincy, Florida, neighborhood.

Spanish moss in the sunlight.

This building is on the rail line, a
former depot or warehouse maybe?

Beautiful mural along the railroad tracks.

We like this cute house.

The walk directions mentioned the Gadsden Tomato Company, so we checked it out as we walked by. We completely missed our turn onto Graves St.! We didn't see the street sign as we went by. So we continued on until we found another street we were supposed to turn on and ended up picking up the block we missed on the way back.

Gadsden Tomato Company plant.

Joseph L. Ferolito Recreation Center.

We got back on track with the directions at the Gadsden Tomato Company. It was about 18 blocks back to downtown. As we walked, we noticed some people had candy out in baskets outside their gate and asked people to take a piece of candy.

One couple was out in front of their house setting up a candy chute for social distancing. They had a length of medium-width PVC pipe going down to the sidewalk from their front porch. They slid the candy down into a bucket. They asked us to be their guinea pigs to test it and slid two Tootsie Roll Pops down to us. It worked great. We thanked them for the candy and continued on.

The Halloween 2020 candy chute.

To finish up the route, our instructions took us back through downtown and into another lovely neighborhood. I was glad we were almost done.

Spanish style home.

Colonial style.

Here's a pretty entry gate.

One last pass through downtown.

When we returned to Hardee's, I had to stop in to stamp my "Rockin' Around the Clock" special program book. There was a clock tower on the County Courthouse. For you Volksmarchers who are doing special programs, there is also a Little Free Library (two of them on the 11k), and a "Q" town for your alphabetical city book.

On the way back to the RV park, Bob drove by the water tower so I could get a photo. It's a nice one. We shopped at Walmart, put diesel in the truck, and returned to our 5th wheel at Ingram's Marina for a big green salad with tuna on it.

The sunset over the lake was pretty, but I had already taken my shoes off. The photo is taken from the top step of our 5th wheel and unfortunately there were trees in the way.

We also saw a white squirrel. I don't think it's an albino because it doesn't have pink eyes.