Day 23 Almost through South Carolina

We got a bit of a late start this morning at 6:09. We were hoping for a couple of hours of calm like yesterday but the breezes had started already and were out of the south west. We had our usual long (5-mile) warm up and were going at a reasonable clip.

We crossed I 26 and stopped at a very nice minimart with a Subway inside. It was just in time. There had been NOTHING on the road up to that point. It was at about the 18-mile mark. We were tired, hungry, and in need of the facilities. We ate and had a fairly long stop. According to the locals there was nothing on the road until St. George, another 8 miles.

Well, we made the 8 miles to St. George. There was nothing in this town. All the services were over next to I 95. We stopped at a thrift store and bought water and Powerade and used the facilities. This was the 26-mile mark. We figured that we had another 26 miles to go.

We stopped at a convince store in Grover and Debbie got stuck in the bathroom (jammed door). We took off because we still had about 18 miles to go. We only made on more brief stop at another little convenience store on the outskirts of Walterboro.

Finally we entered Walterboro. There was a strip and traffic. It was a bit unnerving and we walked up one small hill just to get away from it. It turned out to be farther after entering the town than we anticipated and by the time we saw the Hampton Inn sign (on the other side of the highway) we were tired, thirsty, and starving. So we stopped at the Waffle House and ate lunch.

Then it was up over I 95 and into the Hampton Inn. First stop - the pool. It felt great. After that Debbie scouted out the dinner prospects and I got to work. I worked for about 2 or more hours.

We went to dinner at a Cracker Barrel nearby. I am blogging as we sit here just chilling. Tomorrow we would like to make it to Hardeeville, only a few miles from the Georgia Border.

We were asking directions of just about everyone in the place because there is a service road right next to the restaurant that looks as if I can save us some miles and be quieter. No one seemed sure of exactly where it went or how it connected to 17. I was paying my bill and the woman doing the credit card made a mistake and had to call over a manager. He fixed it and we asked him. He had no idea but he looked at my shirt and said that his daughter just graduated from Cortland as a Criminology major. He had just moved down here. Wow, one of the woman working the desk at this Hampton grew up in Cortland and this fellow’s daughter is a SUNY Cortland graduate. Small world story of the day.

Today’s ride: We rode 51.8 miles (about 1.8 miles off route)  at an average speed of 8.8 mph. We were on the bike for 5 hours and 50 minutes. We are now about 969 miles into our trip.   

Debbie’s emotionometer: Today the mood was good; nobody was crabby!

For those of you wondering what happens on the bike:  Scenery today was more trees (loblolly pines giving off a wonderful scent in the heat of the day) and fields. The trees are great both for the shade they provide and for the wind break they offer from the angled head wind. The corn around here is already tasseled with ears developing, much more advanced than our corn back home. One of the crops seems to be beans of some sort; this crop is much younger and less developed than the corn. The broad leaf plant we thought might be sugar beets turned out to be tobacco (duh.)