Day 17: Seaside, NC

The temperature started out in the low 60s this morning, with intermittent rain showers.  Rather than cooking breakfast in the rain, we opted to break camp early, do some grocery shopping and to get something to eat on the road.  

In hindsight, we probably should have waited a couple of hours.  The commute traffic was pretty bad, so we waited quite a while in Conway until that seemed to have settled down a bit.  Alea got rolling around 9:30 am.

With the roads being so bad, we kept a close eye on one another.

It was more of the same: 37 miles of rough, narrow roads that only rarely had any sort of shoulder, and a fair amount of traffic most of the way.  And, of course, Alea once again ran into another bridge closure (likely due to the major flooding that SC had last year):

There really was no clear option on how to get around this.  The official detour put us on a limited access highway where bicycles are prohibited, so I drove Alea and her bike to the point where the detour rejoined our route - a distance of about 4 miles.

Southern Hospitality, South Carolina style?
Is this a Freudian reference to riding a bicycle on South Carolina roads?

Once we got into North Carolina the roads improved considerably, there were more shoulders (but not nearly enough of them) and plenty of signage about sharing the road with bicycles.  People definitely seemed more accommodating of cyclists.  Aside from a short white-knuckle section of Hwy 17, it was a vast improvement over what we experienced the full length of South Carolina.  We are hoping that this will continue (there has to be a good reason that George Hincapie lives and trains in North Carolina), though it is likely that getting through Wilmington in a couple of days from now will not be a pleasant experience.

I often said after my 17,000 mile bicycle tour 30 years ago, that there is no road I'm afraid to ride once, but plenty that I'd never ride twice.  You can place most South Carolina roads in the latter category.  We've scratched South Carolina off of our list of places where we might choose to relocate to.

We are camping tonight at Wishing Well Family Campground ($24, power and water - it would have been just $12 if we belonged to Passport America).  For a private campground, it is great!  We have the whole Back 40 to ourselves (they are only part way through getting this section ready for "the season"), the shower house is a bit rustic (but it is nearby and clean) and it's cheaper than the other nearby campgrounds and RV parks.  Lana thinks all campsites should be this huge - lots of opportunities for playing ball!

When we got here there was a sign on the door that the office was closed until 4 pm.  We left a note with our phone number, letting the owner know that we wanted to check in.  He called at 4 on the dot, and was very appreciative that we had let him know we were here.  More rain this evening, so we drove into town for Mexican...