Our nights sleep was less than stellar. The hotel was a huge disappointment. We all dragged ourselves out of the hotel and sleepily day-dreamed about a nice place to sleep. Motivation was in short supply....so mostly we were quiet.

Since we had then missed breakfast, we hit the main road rather than the route. This would be a huge shortcut, and would hopefully lead us to breakfast. Also, this would mean traffic. The purpose of this trip is to avoid the highway so we hoped to find breakfast quick and get back onto the rural route.

After several miles, no breakfast, so we stopped at a fruit stand. $6 got us as many peaches as we were willing to eat.

We found a real breakfast several miles later at the Breakfast Cove. Unfortunately we were then 10 miles off our route, so we struggled to find our way to it. Eventually we succeeded.

While finding our route, we ran into our first cross country MRT riders. These two ladies were from Germany and Vancouver, heading from Memphis to Chicago. This was their first day.

This area looked nothing like Earth. Kudzu in this area has brought all but the strongest trees to the ground, leaving only thick trunks standing. The kudzu even creeps out onto the road. At times, Chuck fell behind and we assumed the Kudzu got him.

I have never seen a ten percent grade sign.

Luckily the temperature didn't get above 90. The humidity was horrid though, and Chuck wasn't very happy about it. We all struggled, but eventually the temp dropped to 86 and I was doing much better. In Wisconsin we would say that it "wanted to rain", yet here it seems to be normal. Chuck struggled until the temp got below 83. A few degrees makes a huge difference; you hit a certain temperature and you are able to continue. Even so, everything we owned was wet and sticky.

It was starting to get dark, the roads were spooky with their un-earthly tropical climate, and we had quite a few miles to go.

We got to the campground; the lobby had AC and a pop machine. The machine only took $1 bills and I only had a $50. Katie was nice enough to sell me a $1 for $50. It was worth it!

We set up camp and ordered pizza (2nd night in a row, yuck). They would only deliver to the main gate, so the guys rode to the office (3/4 mile) and waited in the AC. The girls showered. The Meeham Shelby state park is nice, but the bathrooms are some of the dirtiest I have seen at a state park.

Everyone hung up laundry to dry and slipped into their tents. This was the cue that the insects needed to being their nightly songs. Every few minutes the insects would increase their volume by a notch. The sounds seemed similar to those in the north, but far louder. I even heard katie mumble "really" once when the noise took a big volume jump. After a few minutes thunder began to rumble in the distance. Hmmm.......

66 miles (1028 miles total)

Google Earth File