Lake Lily Park — Maitland
Lake Lily Park in Maitland hosts a farmers market every Sunday, a Food Truck Pod on Wednesdays, and art festivals in the spring and fall.
The farmers market features local vendors of fresh produce, eggs, seafood, artisan bread, prepared foods and other local products. There is live music, too. We went there for our second S-Cargo ride.
There are lots of good routes to get there by bike. I’ve drawn out some from three directions: Downtown Orlando and College Park; Winter Springs/Tuscawilla; and Altamonte Springs/Wekiva Trail. For all of these routes, I’ve selected the roads with the lowest traffic interactions. You can, of course, modify them for your own comfort level to use bigger roads. Here are some route descriptions:
Downtown Orlando and College Park
This route is essentially the 17-92 bypass route discussed here. Rather than turning off on Central, as described in that post, take the trail into Lake Lily Park. You can connect to this route from anywhere in the Downtown Orlando or Winter Park neighborhoods.
Winter Springs/Tuscawilla, Deer Run and Casselberry
A boardwalk connects the Dommerich neighborhood to Maitland Community Park. A hard-pack dirt trail leads through the woods to Mayo Ave.
Much of this route is used regularly by fitness cyclists. You’ll see lots of other cyclists in Deer Run. The route uses the Kewanee Trail, discussed here, to avoid some bigger roads. It also uses one of my favorite connectors—the trail through Maitland Community Park and the bike bridge over U.S. 17-92.
Maitland Avenue is actually very easy to ride on, just own your lane. The reason I moved the route behind the park is the RR tracks are treacherous. The angle is almost parallel, so it is difficult to align yourself perpendicular to them. Many, many bicyclists have fallen hard on those tracks, so I recommend using the neighborhood streets by Lake Sybelia, the little trail extension to the east (it only goes to Horatio), or dismount and use the sidewalk.
Altamonte Springs/Wekiva Trail, and parts north
This route has more traffic interaction than the other two, but it’s a good bike route. I use portions of it quite often, although I prefer 4-lane Maitland Avenue to 2-lane Wymore.
From the Seminole/Wekiva trail, there is an entrance to Sanlando Park. It’s a crazy tight turn, but it gets you into the park. I think it’s the only connection to that trail between 434 and Montgomery.
Unfortunately, there’s no light at Central to make a left turn, but traffic shouldn’t be too bad on the weekend. Central is an easy road to ride on and it’s recently been repaved. The right lane is wide enough to share on the bridge over I-4, though you may want to control it going downhill.
Going through the Mall is easy, but be on the look out for crossing traffic near the Renaissance Center. Sight lines are bad, right-of-way violations are common. Hattaway Dr. offers a lovely, shady ride past Lake Orienta. There are 2 route variations beginning at Barclay. Turning left is the route I usually use. Taking the Wymore option offers a nice ride around Lake Sybelia, but Wymore isn’t always pleasant.
