Happy Birthday Stefan!!!!!
We started out our morning with a delicious Shoney's breakfast buffet and a pot of coffee.
The landscape varied from thick pine forests to cypress swamps with alternating stands of lilies and saw palmettos. We saw many more logging trucks today, and they were still courteous.
We stopped for a snack break at McDonalds off 17. We talked with Gloria about our trip. She said she had always wanted to meet people who had done something like this. Soon we were back out in the heat (only 85 degrees!) and on the road again.
We passed by wetlands areas, reminding us of the Everglades, complete with small hammocks and alligators. The plants growing in the water are as vibrant yellow-green as you see in the photo below. They were quite a spectacular contrast to the dark waters.
Alongside the wetlands area many fllowers were in broom, including this passion flower:
Today was a short day, as the next town on the Adventure Cycling Map was more than 55 miles from Ridgeland. Since we didn't get up early we decided 90 miles wasn't going to happen today. We had a relaxing evening and planned out our route for the next day. We decided to try and make it to St. Augustine by Saturday evening so that Connie, Chris' Mom, could meet us there. Maybe some other family will meet us there too? Or friends? :)
28 July 2011, 61 miles
We biked through the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, composed of cypress swamps, slash pine and palmetto forests, and lily pad-full swamps. We found a wee bit of shade, and stopped for lunch. The area we stopped at was very pretty, with a myriad of differnt types of reeds and grasses, with scattered bushes and a swamp/lake full of croaking frogs, flowering lily pads, and noisy birds.
Shady lunch spot:
The swamp and lily pads:
The traffic today was overwhelming: heavy, impatient, and fast. We started off pleasantly enough, following 17 through small towns and logging forests, but suddenly we crossed over Interstate-95 and we joined the traffic heading to or around Savannah, GA. Despite our choices of smaller highways circumventing the city, the traffic was relentless.
Eventually the traffic began to improve as we got farther from I-95 and Savannah. After riding through a particularily dirty section of sholder (filled with trash and tire parts), we took an impromptu break in the shade when Emily's front tire went flat. We pulled a long, thin, and very sharp piece of metal out of the tire and changed out the tube. It was not a very long delay, but it seemed like it might have been enough to prevent us from being able to make it to our planned destination before the sun would set.
When we rolled into Midway and found a small motel, we had to stop to consider what we wanted to do. Because of the flat and traffic delays throughout the day, we only had about 2.5 hours of daylight left and 30 miles more to go to get to our final destination. We decided to call it an early night and to get some rest so that we would be able to bike farther in the next couple of days.
