Tuesday 3rd March
Relaxing in Deland at the moment it's a small town just 20 miles from Daytona we have been made very welcome yet again courtesy of Lauretta and Kit from couch surfing.com
We spent the day at De Leon state park just relaxing in the sun and swimming in the spring as we had tried the beach at Daytona but as beaches go it's dirty and noisey big trucks, cars and bikes traveling along it all day. It was more like relaxing on the M25 The springs however is very relaxing clean and quiet and as its a state park there's plenty to do so we will probably do a bit of canoeing while here.

Our host in Deland is a biker too and we hope to be meeting a few more bikers from around here. The Daytona bike week starts on Friday and spreads out past Deland it's become that big. There is also a big bike event this Sat in Deland and they close the town off to all vehicles except bikes. As we have been offered the room here at Deland as long as we like we decide to stay for the start of Daytona bike week.
This couch surfing is turning out to be much better than we expected and a great way of meeting like minded people. In the evening we went in to town with our host for dinner and a few drinks. Deland is a fantastic little town it still has its share of fast food outlets but you can walki in to town from where we are staying and walk around the town as well which for us is great, it's nice to get off the bike in the evening and stretch your legs a little and not have to worry about jackets and helmets. The Floridians think we're mad wearing bike clothing as they just ride in shorts and T-shirts, don't even wear boots. A lot of them ride in flip flops.Wednesday 4th March
we spent the entire day at DeLeon, on the way we stopped off for some breakfast and as soon as we got there we took a canoe out for about an hour hoping it would not be too hot we were wrong despite a nice breeze it was scorching out on the river, getting the canoe in the river was fun as no sooner than Marcia had got in a snake shot out from the sand and swam past her. After point out the snake to Marcia she freaked and nearly jumped out of the canoe. By the time I had got the camera out it was off and swimming.

Thursday 5th March
We decided to try and ride some of the trails in the national parks today but all the ones we found were deep sand and not really suitable for 2 up riding we managed about half a mile before I decided to turn around, it was to much like hard work in the heat and slow going, also as Marcia has never been off road on the back of a bike I did not want to put her off for good. We had a good days riding and found an old settlement Museam which was quite interesting we even found some roads that had bends in them, we then took a quick dip at the springs before heading back for a home cooked meal by our hosts Lauretta and Kit. Shortly after dinner we went for a guided tour through the town.