Day 10: Walterboro, SC

We covered about 70 miles yesterday, splitting the day thus:  20 miles by Steve, 34 miles by Alea and 16 miles by Steve.  The next few days should be much shorter days, so we'll revert to our normal pattern where only one of us rides each day.

My typical riding expression (I'm a mouth breather).

The longer days, and day-after-day riding of late, are helping to kick us back into shape after our four month winter hiatus.  I'm starting to feel my legs getting back in form.  My butt likewise, but to a lesser extent.

Lana's standard complaint about living on the road:
There's never enough time to play ball!

The one thing about Georgia that really impressed us was that they have signed U.S. Bicycle Routes throughout the state, though we rode on only one short segment just before reaching South Carolina.  Missouri is the only other state we've visited where it was so obvious what routes were designated to facilitate cycling safely from place to place.  Of course all that stopped as soon as we entered South Carolina.  It would be so awesome to be able to navigate by highway signs, rather than having to constantly change map panels to keep on route.  It would expand our options for places to explore by orders of magnitude.  But I suspect we can ride for years on Adventure Cycling maps before we have to repeat significant stretches of our route.

We are enjoying being in South Carolina.  Some of the roads have left a bit to be desired, and the wind was against us most of the day.  But the weather is awesome - decent humidity and highs in the 70s.

Alea pulls into Robertville, SC.

We are camping tonight in the Parking Lot of the Absurd: an RV park next to I-95, full of big motor coaches and huge fifth wheels: New Green Acres RV Park, near Walterboro SC ($26 with power and water), with "the longest and widest pull throughs east of the Mississippi."  The mega RVs end up piling into places like this for those pull throughs and the clear view of the sky, so that they can get their satellite TVs humming (gotta keep those brains turned to goo...).

It is rare that we see such rigs on the two lane roads that we travel.  A key reason is that when a large tractor trailer passes in the opposite direction there is a phenomenon known as "wind slap," which will have them white-knuckling it, praying that they'll be able to keep their rigs on the pavement and their shorts clean (we barely feel such passing semis, except when we are on our bikes). 

Don't you love rumble strips that force you to ride further into traffic?