Quick trip to Tally

I've made a lot of quick trips to Tallahassee, some faster than others. When we moved to Jacksonville I kept my FSU football season tickets and I don't think I missed any games over those seven years. When we moved to Memphis I kept the tickets for about five years but didn't go nearly as often, since it was over 500 miles.

The fastest trip I made over those years was one from Jacksonville when my buddy Paul and I decided to rent a private plane.

Taking a plane 170 miles was not the most economical transport but it sounded like a good idea at the time. The pilot was a friend who needed to get some extra flight hours. It was a fast trip over but we got stuck in Tallahassee overnight on the return. There was heavy fog and the pilot wasn't legal to fly if she couldn't see the ground. So the return we could have done in about 3 hours by car took 15.

There is a family story about my great great grandfather making a quick trip to Tallahassee in 1890.

William Augustus Lundy was trying to claim a homestead on 80 acres of land in Manatee County Florida. He had already cleared part of the land when he got word someone else was making a homestead claim on half the property. The other man had mailed a land claim to the State office in Tallahassee. William Lundy had served in the US Cavalry during the Civil War so he took off by horseback to beat the mail. He was successful and filed his patent on August 5, 1890.

The trip is about 290 miles using the most direct route today. If he used only one horse he would have had to limit it to about 25 miles a day according to someone who is supposed to be an expert, so it probably took him a week to get there.