Discovering Florida 5

6x9

Discovering Florida 5 continues a long-term journey of bicycle touring, photography, and historical exploration across the Sunshine State. This volume documents 25 new routes ridden between 2018 and 2020, covering more than 2,100 miles through 20 Florida counties.

The routes travel deep into rural Florida, visiting active towns, forgotten communities, and numerous ghost towns shaped by the rise and collapse of railroads, logging camps, phosphate mining, cattle ranching, and agricultural frontiers. For the first time in the series, the journey enters Gilchrist and Dixie counties, while also revisiting large territories in Levy, Marion, Putnam, Nassau, Duval, Alachua, Citrus, and beyond.

Each route combines first-hand bicycle travel with detailed historical context, tracing Florida’s layered past from Indigenous cultures such as the Timucua, Seminole, Creek, and Potano, through Spanish missions, 19th-century conflicts, railroad expansion, racial segregation, and the environmental consequences of modern development.

The book passes through major river systems including the Suwannee, St. Johns, Withlacoochee, and Ocklawaha, as well as state forests, wildlife management areas, historic ports, abandoned settlements, and remote backroads rarely seen by visitors. Springs, sinkholes, rail trails, barrier islands, and interior farmland all form part of the landscape.

Discovering Florida 5 is not a cycling manual or a conventional travel guide. It is a geographical and historical record, observed slowly from secondary roads, former rail corridors, and the saddle of a bicycle.

This volume continues the five-book English series and continues the larger project of documenting Florida route by route, without shortcuts or idealization.

• Publication date: December 31, 2025

• Language: English

• Print length: 165 pages

• ISBN: 9798242002913 Standard Edition

• ISBN: 9798232912130 Trade Edition

• Formats: eBook, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook

• Price: Paperback $14.99, eBook $4.99, Hardcover $19.99, Audiobook $9.99

• How to get it:

• Amazon

• Google Play Books

• Audiobook

5x8 Edition

Explore the Complete Series

• Descubriendo la Florida 1
• Descubriendo la Florida 2
• Descubriendo la Florida 3
• Descubriendo la Florida 4
• Descubriendo la Florida 5
• Discovering Florida 1
• Discovering Florida 2
• Discovering Florida 3
• Discovering Florida 4

Includes the routes:

1. Bartow - Lakeland - Haines City - Fort Meade
2. Rutland - Marion Oaks - Ocala Waterway - Stokes Ferry
3. Linden - Webster - Center Hill - Wahoo - Oak Grove
4. Yankeetown - Inglis - Crystal River - Homosassa Springs - Freeman
5. Bushnell - Dade City - Zephyrhills - Crystal Springs
6. Ocoee - Wekiva Springs - Fairview Shores - Clarcona
7. Apopka - Mount Dora - Umatilla - Lake Kathryn
8. Lumberton - Thonotosassa - Town N Country - Rocky Creek
9. Tavares - Leesburg - Ocklawaha - Silver Springs
10. Wesley Chapel - New Port Richey - Land O Lakes
11. Alturas - Cypress Gardens - Acton - Kathleen - Winston
12. Bay Lake - Winter Garden - Clermont - Okahumpka - Astatula
13. Gotha - Tangelo Park - Buenaventura Lakes - Vineland - Windermere
14. Odessa - Bayonet Point - Weeki Wachee - Hernando Beach
15. Amelia City - Springfield - Riverside - Ortega
16. Vilano Beach - Ponte Vedra - Arlington - Switzerland
17. San Antonio - Hill n Dale - Brooksville - Masaryktown
18. Dunnellon - Lecanto - Lake Lindsey
19. Moss Bluff - Fort McCoy - Kerr City - Salt Springs
20. Baldwin - Crawford - Yulee - Becker
21. Southwest Jacksonville - Callahan - Hilliard - Boulogne
22. Reddick - Citra - Hawthorne - Micanopy - Flemington
23. Palatka - Orange Springs - Edgar - Interlachen - Hollister
24. Gulf Hammock - Juliette - Williston - Romeo
25. Cedar Key - Otter Creek - Chiefland - Fanning Springs - Old Town

Jefferson Aleman