Day 19 South Carolina and 801

Debbie says that we don't look at the scenery enough. So we stoppped and she took a picture of an interesting swamp.

We left Fayetteville at about 6:00 am. The wind had already started to come up. That was very disappointing. It was between 75 and 80 degrees heading for the mid-90s according to the weather channel.

The first several miles were a bit hilly through Fayetteville. Nothing like Pennsylvania but not flat either.

Our first stop was in St. Pauls after several places being closed. We ended up at a Hardees (not our first choice) because the MacDonalds was a couple of miles off route. So this first successful stop was at 9:00 am 17.2 miles into the ride. We got the usual number of “You rode from where? You are going to where? On a bicycle?” Frankly, that is fun to hear. (The best part of Mel’s day and the true motivation for the trip!)

About two hours later we stopped in Lumberton for Gatorade and met a retired chief of police of that city. Then we learned that there was a Subway in a Walmart just a mile down the road. That is our first choice for lunch and we needed some more sun block. As we were leaving that Walmart, the chief pulled up with a map of the back roads that would get us around, rather than through, Lumberton. We took his route. It probably saved us a couple of miles and tons of aggravation.

By the time we left Lumberton the winds had come up with a vengeance. On flat level ground we could only make about 6 mph against that headwind. It was agonizing. The depressing part was that the distance to our preferred destination was still about 22 miles. We pressed on because it was either stop with very short day or ...  We chose ...

We finally got through Lumberton but we came to a “corner” where it was not obvious what do. There was a BP station and we went in and asked. The woman pointed to the correct road and said that it was another 14 miles (it was 15.5). After drinking we were off again.

After about 11-12 miles we came to the town of Rowland and stopped again for a Gatorade. The ride to this town was agonizing because of the wind. The people there  said we had about 3 miles to go. We were off. Inexplicably the wind seemed to have died off. We made the 3 or so miles relatively quickly.

We got to the South Carolina border and took our pictures and there it was in front of us: The famous South of the Border. A few hundred yards and we were at their motel. We ended the day at about 5:50 pm (way too late).

We have just eaten dinner at the Sombrero Restaurant and will soon shower and crash out. Well, Debbie will. I still have to do some work on my course. We probably will not get away super early tomorrow morning so I will do some more then.

Todays Ride: We rode 55.5 miles at 7.3 mph. We were on the bike 7 hours 33 minutes , with a total elapsed time of about 11 hours 30 minutes. We are now 801 miles into our trip and have reached South Carolina.

Debbie’s Emotionometer: Coping emotionally better with the heat and wind conditions. Mel made comments about them but not so much complaining. It has been a long and difficult day and we are exhausted.