Days 31 & 32: Chickahominy County Park & Yorktown, VA

The weather and traffic for the ride to Chickahominy was awesome.  It was 70 degrees when I started riding and the winds were reasonably fair.  The roads were great - low traffic and very scenic.  The terrain was a bit more rolling than we have seen in quite a while, which was a very welcome change.

We managed to catch the free ferry across the James River just before it set off at 11 am.  From there, I was on the Capital Trail most of the way to our campground - smooth and easy pedaling the whole time.

We camped at Chickahominy County Park ($41.19 with taxes [less for County residents], with power and water).  While it is a large campground, there are only a handful of sites occupied, and only about half of it is open at this time.

After setting camp we made a brief visit to Jamestowne.  The last time I was there was about 50 years ago.  Only recently has it been proven that the site truly is the actual site of Jamestowne.  Accounts from nearly 200 years ago claimed that the fort was under water in the James River, and no detailed map of the area or the actual fort had survived to present times.  The only clues were Jamestowne Council records, which gave some description of how various buildings were oriented to one another.  An ongoing archaeological dig is proving that the original fort was built in the vicinity of the surviving 17th Century brick church (shown in the photo below).

We awoke to rain on our second day here, so we were relieved that we didn't have to ride in it.  Instead we went out for breakfast at the Five Forks Cafe before heading to the Yorktown Battlefield.  I had my first serving of Dutch scrapple.

Three of my direct ancestors were in attendance at the Siege of Yorktown when Lord Cornwallis capitulated, marking the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War.  Those three ancestors are all on my father's side of the family tree:  John Malone, Senior; John Hunter, Junior and Benjamin Rodden.  I suspect there may be more of my ancestors who were there, but thus far available records are insufficient to prove that.  These three men (or their descendants) had applied for pensions based upon their Revolutionary War service, providing a wealth of detail about their lives and service.  Transcriptions of some of these documents can be found at revwarapps.org.  More detailed descriptions of the service of these first two men can be found in the main volume of my Malone book.

Cannons used by the English, Americans and French at the Siege of Yorktown.

It was cold and rainy while we listened to a park ranger give an hour and a half synopsis of the events that led up to the Siege of Yorktown and the sequence of events that transpired to force Cornwallis to capitulate.  Despite our being uncomfortably cold (especially Lana, who was quite well behaved), it was well worth catching it all and imagining three of my ancestors lined up in the long row of fellow patriots as the British soldiers marched out and laid down their arms.

Recreated defensive measures on Redoubt #9. 

At the start of the Revolutionary War, when the British first marched into battle against the revolutionaries they are said to have sung "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which at that time was considered an insulting song that equated American colonists to backwoods yokels.  Yet, with the help of the French Army and Navy, they had just defeated the best trained and equipped infantry soldiers of their day.  I can imagine my ancestor's pride as they sang that same song for the British as they were marched past them that day on their way to lay down their arms. 

Day 30: Windsor, VA

Alea started out with a nice tailwind and a pleasant 70 degrees, though the route twisted and turned enough that it wasn't always easy pedaling.  She crossed into Virginia early in the morning, and most of our roads were very rural and very scenic with not a lot of traffic.

Our plan for the next two days was to ride our preferred 40 miles each day, which would put us just west of Jamestown in a couple of days.  Unfortunately, the first campground that we were shooting for (which was located exactly 40 miles down the road from last night's campground) has been permanently closed (as in there is absolutely no evidence that it ever existed, other than on the internet).  But we were in luck that there was another private campground just seven miles farther down the road.

So we are staying at Big Bear Family Campground, not far from Windsor, VA ($31 + tax, for power and water).  It is a nice enough campground, though it looks to be mainly occupied by long term tenants, none of whom seemed particularly friendly.

With wrong turns included (we both had a few), the total mileage for the day was 49 miles.

Day 29: Merchants Millpond State Park, NC

More windy weather.  The wind was out of the southwest, but we were headed northwest, so it wasn't the blessing it would have been last week, especially because our route had plenty of twists and turns.  But at least it wasn't 55 miles directly into a headwind...

We took a more direct route than the one suggested by Adventure Cycling.  That route would have been around 63 miles - more than either us wanted to do in one day.  And after Alea's last day in the saddle, it made no sense to split the mileage, since she needed some recovery time.

So it was mainly a day of riding through swamps, forests and farmlands, sometimes on fairly busy roads with little to no shoulder.  But most parts of the route at least had an adequate shoulder.  

I decided to ratchet my pace down a notch.  That puts me in a slightly slower, go-all-day pace, which allows me to enjoy the countryside a bit more.  Plus I'm less likely to blow by a turn that I'm supposed to make.  Since we are heading into areas where there will be lots of turns and enjoyable scenery, I'll likely keep it dialed back most of the time - it may take a little longer getting from place to place, but when we get there I have a lot more energy.

We camped at Merchants Millpond State Park ($20, primitive, hot showers) west of Sunbury, NC, where we ended the day's ride.  It is an awesome little campground with 20 sites, which have all recently been spiffed up.  The only other couple camping with us had a white Chevy van and were towing a roughly 28 foot Airstream (they looked a bit like us, only super-sized).

The millpond appears on the map to be a huge lake, and I think it does have a fairly significant surface area.  But the surrounding area doesn't have all that much relief, so I suspect it is rarely more than a few feet deep in most places.  The part of it that we saw was basically a cypress swamp, and it looked to be a fun place to go canoeing.  A fellow Camp Inn owner suggested going for a paddle to find some gators, but since we travel with a dog that is gator-snack-sized, we opted not to.

Day 28: Walnut Island, NC

"We came down here for wind and sand, and we got them..."

-Orville Wright

That about sums up the bulk of our experience on the Outer Banks: wind and sand, and no shortage of either.

In Europe these would be rape fields, where they get rapeseed oil.  I think in the states it may be canola.

Alea once again drew the short straw for the weather.  She had a very brisk wind out of the northeast, so pretty much the entire 42 mile ride was a long, slow grind.  The wind was bad enough in the morning that we had to put up our galley wind wall, plus also open both deep storage lids, in order to block the wind so that we could keep the propane stove lit long enough to cook breakfast.

On our way north we stopped at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk and had a look around.  It gave Alea a chance to take a break about mid-way along her route.   We thought we'd finally get some use of the National Parks Access Pass we bought a month ago, but it turned out that today was a free admission day.

We are once again on the mainland, in a community called Walnut Island that we expect is actually part of the town of Grandy, NC.  We are camping at Barry's Walnut Island Lodge Restaurant Sports Bar and Campground/RV Park ($45, water and power).  There is only an outdoor shower, and we'll need to use some porta potties for after hours use, but the folks here have been very friendly and helpful.  We arrived just a few hours before the wrap up of Bike Week, so there was a loud band playing in the bar, but we were just far enough away to enjoy the music and still hold a conversation.

Our campsite at Barry's Walnut Island.

Of course after today's slog, Alea was VERY interested in getting a shower.  We were allowed to use their Mardi Gras-themed lodge room (#2), since the outdoor shower wouldn't have been much fun in this wind (the rooms all have different themed decors).

Some of the decor in the themed Mardi-Gras room.

The campground looks like an extension of the parking lot, but it is waterside near a small boat ramp, and there is a boardwalk around most of the inlet.  The only downside was that there was lots of goose poop on the ground, though we managed to clean up most of what we might step in or that Lana might roll in.  Despite being right across from the bar we have a reasonable amount of privacy.  But we were glad when the last Harley finally hit the road...

Days 26 & 27: Oregon Inlet, NC

The weather started changing as we left Cape Hatteras, with a strong wind coming out of the southwest.  We headed out early, trying to stay even with the leading edge of the front, in order to increase the odds that we would reach our destination before any rain started.  I managed to average a bit better than 20 mph at a fairly conservative pace, until around the midway point, when I had a puncture in my rear tire (the first of the season).  Once that was fixed, the sun came out and I decided the weather was no threat, so I took a more leisurely pace the rest of the way.  That is, except for the long bridge over Oregon Inlet just before our campground.  Then it was an all out effort to get over it as quickly as possible (there was about a foot and a half of space to ride between the fog line and the guard rail, but with a strong crosswind and way too many big RVs with the weekend starting).

Help, Ma!  Aliens have snagged me with their tractor beam - they must be after my ball!

So we will spend two nights at Oregon Inlet Campground ($28, primitive, cold showers), where we've once again crossed paths with Joel and Marcy (and Bill the Goat), as well as some others that we've seen camping along the Outer Banks.

Marcy & Joel - Fun Folks!

Once we stopped for the day, the otherwise great tailwind made it hard to enjoy being outside, though we did manage to spend some time on the beach and to see the Bodie Island lighthouse.

Happy, happy, happy...

It stayed dry all day, despite some threatening thunderstorms late in the afternoon.  From around midnight on, the rain was fairly constant and heavy, and it continued off and on until late morning.  That is probably just as well, as it made it a perfect day to do chores.  We got caught up on laundry, did some grocery shopping, cleaned out the van and got the generator squared away (oil changed and filled her up).  We ran the generator for a few hours once we got back, which was more than enough to recharge our electronics and hopefully enough to keep the refrigerator going overnight.  While out and about, we stopped by Fort Raleigh, site of the first English attempt at colonizing the New World.

The obligatory Outer Banks lighthouse photo.

Shortly after we got back, Joel and Marcy were having problems with their motor coach.  The generator wouldn't work, so they had no way to keep their refrigerator running.  They couldn't find anyone to work on it until Tuesday, so they decided to go find a campsite with power in the meantime.  But when they tried to break camp, one of their slide-outs wouldn't close.  Joel got some information on how to close it manually, and it eventually took ten of us to get it to go back in.  It was a great bonding experience - the sort of thing that we would hold a ten year reunion about, but everyone returned to their weekend getaways as quickly as they joined in to help...

After that, the weather improved for a while before another front came in, late in the afternoon.  Lana had a repeat of yesterday on the beach, so she's a very happy camper tonight.

----------------------------------

We got some very sad news tonight.  My uncle, William Carl Adams, died today.  He was 96 years old.  My mother has now outlived her parents and her three siblings.  Thankfully, she has all of her children still living (at least I assume they are alive, as I haven't heard anything to the contrary in a while).  

We visited Uncle Bill two years ago, when he was 94 years old.  He had a body like a gymnast and could jump up off the ground like a teenager - a really remarkable guy.  Since my dad died at 57 it was a relief to find some male longevity genes somewhere in the family.  We had expected to see him a few more times during our travels, but it was clear for some time now that the quality of his life had been declining enough that life wasn't the pleasure for him that it had been most of his life.

Thanks to Uncle Bill, we know that his great grandfather, William Adams, was not actually an Adams.  William Adams was born an orphan in Madison County, Indiana in the early 1830s, and there seems to be no known information as to the identity of his parents.  So Uncle Bill agreed to do a yDNA test, which would identify what male line he was descended from.  The results showed that there were two close matches to some Etchisons, one of whom had done a lot of research on the Etchison family.  He believes that there were a group of Etchisons who had migrated to Indiana from North Carolina, one of whom left NC with a wife, but returned without her.  Speculation is that he left William Adams with relatives after his wife's death, and returned home.  That would suggest that William Adams was raised by an aunt, but the courthouse in Madison County burned down in the 1880s, and there are sporadic marriage records in North Carolina prior to 1830.  So there are few public records available to better piece this puzzle together.  

Day 25: Cape Hatteras, NC

The wind died down a bit and the temperatures were warmer, making yesterday a great day for Alea's easy 25 mile ride to Cape Hatteras.

Alea has a front row seat on the ferry from Okracoke to Hatteras.

We are camping at Cape Point Campground ($20, primitive, cold showers), where recently there had been some coastal flooding.  About half of the campground is still too soggy for camping, but we had no trouble finding a dry spot, as there are only five sites that are currently occupied, despite this being a fairly large campground.  With so few people here, we've been able to have Lana off lead most of the time, so she thinks this is a pretty awesome place.  We have a view of Cape Hatteras lighthouse, the second tallest lighthouse in the world and probably the most recognizable lighthouse in the US (thanks in part to it showing up on a US postage stamp in the 1970s).  

Our camper battery was seriously depleted when we arrived, since it had been four days since we were last on shore power.  There was power enough for everything but the refrigerator, so we it was necessary the previous night to plug it in to the van to keep things cool.  We had fired up the generator the day before in order to charge the onboard battery, but we shut it down after our electronics were fully charged (about two hours).  And since we are driving less than an hour a day, it doesn't get much of a recharge from the van.  

We checked the owner's manual, and it looks as though when the battery is so depleted we need to run the generator for 8 to 10 hours to get a full charge.  That would give us enough power to keep the refrigerator running for about two days.  So I think that roughly translates to burning a gallon of gas for two day's worth of battery power.  Or about a dollar a day.  That is useful information, as we've been unsure how long we needed to run the generator in order to keep everything powered up.  Since it will be at least a couple more days before we are back on shore power, we will need to gas up the generator, as we will need to run it quite a bit.

I saw something last night that I haven't seen in about forty years - fireflies, or lightning bugs.  We used to see zillions of them in the 60s when we visited my aunt's house in Parsons, Kansas.  But they don't seem nearly as common anymore.  There were only a few out last night, but hopefully we'll see more over the coming days and weeks.

Days 23 & 24: Okracoke, NC

The blustery weather subsided and it warmed up for us on Monday and Tuesday.  We had fair winds leaving Oyster Point and much of the 46 mile ride was on freshly paved roads with low traffic volumes.

We were wedged in on the ferry to Okracoke.

We are at Okracoke Campground ($28, primitive camping with cold showers) for a couple of nights, in a campsite just behind the beach dunes and next to a path to the beach.  Since we had been on battery power for the previous two nights, the short drive to our new campsite wasn't enough to fully recharge our nearly drained camper battery.  So we had the generator out for a few hours in order to recharge it and our electronics.  It looks as though we'll be using that a bit over the coming week, as all the National Park Service campsites on the Outer Banks (OBX) are primitive.

There are no campfires allowed in the campground, but they allow campfires on the beach, and dogs are also allowed on the beach (this is the first NPS campground we've seen where there are so few restrictions on where we take the dog, as long as she is leashed).  So we loaded up our wine, chairs and a 2 hour firelog and had a beach campfire last night. 

Hiking the ball in the sand, Lana's favorite beach game when she can't get us to play with her.

On the way there, we stopped by at Joel & Mercy Jacobsen's big diesel pusher.  We had met them a week or so ago at Wishing Well Campground just as we were getting ready to pull out.  We then camped across from them at Cedar Point Campground, and now they are a half dozen spaces down the road from us here.  They roll with their mascot, Bill the Goat.

Bill the Goat.

We haven't had the greatest experiences with the owners of such huge rigs.  Many that we've met seem to have worked longer than they should have, bought the most expensive rig they could find for their very first RV and have no clue how to enjoy their retirement.  Joel and Mercy have broken that mold.  

They started out owning Casita campers, a tiny fiberglass camper with a very loyal following (it's generally owners of tiny campers like Casitas, Scamps, A-Liners and the like that we always seem to hit it off with).  From there, they owned a string of RVs, generally motivated by a desire for a more optimal bed arrangement.  That is a  scenario we hear about often from other RV owners, since that is where they spend one third of their time - for many people, if it less than an optimal arrangement, it quickly becomes an unbearable issue.  At one point a friend of his told him to quit futzing around and just buy the biggest RV he could afford, which he did.

So we had our beach fire last night and invited them to come and join us, which they did.  So we asked Joel what he had done for a living.  The short answer was that around 1970 he bought a 1957 school bus that he converted into their home-on-wheels, and towed a 1940 panel van behind it.  His roaming in the bus eventually led him to get into selling composting toilets, and he did quite well with that.  They raised two daughters in that school bus and canned their own food, etc.  We would have loved to have heard more, but our log didn't last long enough.  Hopefully we'll run into them again somewhere down the line.

Enjoying the last rays of the day...

The blustery conditions came back today with a vengeance.  The winds kicked up in the middle of the night, with gusts at least up to 25-30 mph.  Around noon a gust ripped the nylon wind wall on our REI Alcove shade structure (which we had set up yesterday), a clear hint that we should have taken it down hours earlier.  I patched the rip with some duct tape, front and back, and then sewed the layers of duct tape together.  It may not look elegant, but I suspect it will hold better than before

Today has been a day of trying to find ways to stay out of the wind.  There is blowing sand on the beach, so it no fun being out there.  So between our walks with Lana we spend much of our time huddled in the wind shadow created by the open galley hatch.  The wind should subside by tomorrow.

Days 22 & 23: Oyster Point Campground, NC

Sunday was even more blustery than during my ride on Friday.  But Alea only did a bit more than 24 miles to reach our current campsite, at Oyster Point Campground ($8, primitive, vault toilets and water available) located 7 miles north of Newport, NC.

The campground is located a couple of miles off of a county highway, so it is very quiet.  We have a peek-a-boo view of Newport River.  We are also conveniently close one of the two vault toilets, which fortunately doesn't smell (which isn't always the case).

Our peek-a-boo view.

It is a small campground with a host and 14 other campsites.  There is pretty dense undergrowth beneath the pine trees, which helps to block the strong winds.  There is also plenty of firewood that has been left behind by previous campers (and even a chunk of Firestarter Log), so we'll be able to have roaring campfires both evenings that we are here, plus there was a doughnut shaped squeaky toy that Lana found the instant she jumped out of the van.  So for $16 for two nights of camping, this is about as good as it gets.  The only downside is that there is poison ivy growing along the perimeter of the campsite, but there is still plenty of room for Lana without the risk of her getting any on her fur and then sharing it with us at night when we climb into bed.

Another great campsite!

I'm a happy camper!

We were also fortunate to have our camp neighbors stop by before they headed for home and offer us some of their awesome owl cake.  Bettina is honing her skills in hopes of eventually having a part time cake baking business, so we were given the opportunity to sample her wares.  She and Kooba have pet pig, Oliver, who is their kayaking companion.  It was fun swapping stories with them, but it wasn't long before they needed to head home to prepare for another week at work.

Kooba & Bettina...

...and their pig, Oliver.

Since we will be here for two nights, tomorrow will be a shopping day for us.  We'll head to town to pick up a prescription for Alea and then we go grocery shopping to stock up on food, since there are limited shopping options on many parts of the Outer Banks.  We'll catch the ferry to the Outer Banks on Tuesday morning.

The theme for the day: wind...

...and more wind.

Days 20 & 21: Cedar Point, NC

The blustery weather continued for my ride on Friday, but with winds that were a bit stronger than Alea had the day before and with virtually no sunshine.  Despite the forecast calling for it to have been a warmer day, it barely got into the 60s and the lack of sun made it feel much colder.  

It was a 53+ mile ride to Cedar Point, NC, where we checked into a National Forest Service campground a little over a mile north of town ($27, power only at the site).  We managed to get the site farthest from the rest rooms, meaning we got plenty of exercise on our day off.

A view of White Oak River, less than a quarter mile from our campsite.

Despite Friday's ride being a grind, I'm not feeling the effects of it like I had riding under similar conditions earlier in the week.  Which is good.  Alea's comment the other day was something to the effect that if this is what it is going to be all the way up the East Coast that she wonders why we are doing it.  But I think she realizes now that, with our having every other day off, wind doesn't have the same demoralizing effect that it can when riding in such conditions every single day, day after day.  We continue to hope for fairer winds, but the Outer Banks are notoriously windy, so our chances are only 50-50 until we get past them.

With this being the weekend, we stayed put until Sunday morning.  We've got some chores to do before heading out, then it will be a short ride to our next campsite.

Day 19: Surf City, NC

Alea had a very tough day in the saddle today - 53+ miles into a brisk 13 mph headwind, plus plenty of urban traffic as well.  But we've been rewarded with a private campground that is nicer than we had expected.

We missed this sort of photo-op in Florida, so we couldn't resist this stop in Surf City, NC.

On our way to the campground we stopped to buy a milkshake, to give Alea some easy carbs and protein so that she could recover from a very tough ride.  We had finished most of it, but left a fair amount behind when we checked in at the campground.  Lana KNEW we had intentionally left it for her.  She stealthily carried it back into her den behind the front seats, and if she spilled a drop of it, there is no evidence left to convict her.  Needless to say, she was a VERY happy dog.

Urban riding sucks, especially into the wind!

To keep on pace for spending Friday and Saturday night at a National Forest Campground that is about 50 miles north of us, we've bypassed a portion of Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast route, shaving about 15 miles by doing so.  So Alea ended her ride off route in Holly Ridge.  From there we checked out a campground a few miles to the south before opting to drive to Surf City, where we are spending the night.

We are currently about 750 miles south of King of Prussia, PA, where we are planning to arrive on the 13th of May.  At our 40 miles per day pace, that means we can be there in just 19 days, making us officially ten days ahead of schedule at this point.  We plan to soak up some of those extra days while on the Outer Banks, and will do likewise once we are in the Jamestown, VA area.

Our campsite on Becky's Creek.

We are at Lanier's Campground in Surf City ($33 for power and water).  The campground is at the mouth of what we believe is Becky's Creek, which empties into the Intracoastal Waterway.  Our campsite backs onto an area of reeds along the creek.

Day 18: Carolina Beach State Park, NC

I did 45+ miles yesterday, mostly into a strong headwind.  Strong enough that coming off the ferry at Fort Fisher the best I could manage for one stretch was 11 mph (the one hour wait for the ferry across the Cape Fear River didn't help - all my muscles had tightened up).  There the winds were even worse - coming directly off the Atlantic, with nothing to break them.  And the extended forecast looks as though we will be heading into the wind for several days, though right now the forecast doesn't include winds quite as strong as yesterday's.  All I can say is that I slept like a baby last night - I was instantly unconscious and didn't wake up until I felt Lana licking my face in the morning.

Crossing the Cape Fear River.

Our sister ferry passes us mid-channel.

The ferry crossing was $10 for a vehicle under 40 feet in length.  It would have been an additional $2 for the bike, so we stowed that in the van for the crossing.

We camped at Carolina Beach State Park, south of Wilmington.  It was $17 per night, plus a $3 "transaction fee," which gave us a primitive site near the showers.  But we had to present a drivers license in order to register, and once Alea had done that we learned that she qualified for the $5 senior discount.  So $15 is a good deal, as this is a very nice park.  

Pausing for a break from the wind.

A part of the campground is in the process of being upgraded.  The outside campsites in one of the two loops are all being enlarged to accommodate big rigs with slide outs, and they will all will have water and 50 amp electric service.  It's hard to say whether or not the eventual plan is to add power and water to all sites.  They'll likely implement a two tier pricing system once the renovated sites are ready to be occupied.

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...

Days 15 & 16: Myrtle Beach, SC

The cold front forecast for yesterday arrived late.  As a result, it was warmer in the morning (around 40 degrees) than had been forecast.  It also meant that we managed to get most of the wind associated with the front as it moving through the area.  So it was a cold ride into a brisk headwind most of the 65 miles from Jamestown, SC to Conway, SC.

Hmmm... Maybe they are losing too much weight on this trip?

This was supposed to be the worst section of our ride through South Carolina.  While it wasn't a fun ride, by riding it on a Sunday there was none of the heavy truck traffic that we had been warned about.  So we made it without too many heart-pounding moments.  We split the ride into three segments: Alea took the middle section of 20 miles and I did the remainder, with a longer ride in the morning and a shorter ride to wrap things up.

The chilly weather (52 degrees when I started, 54 degrees two hours later) meant that neither of us was in the mood for taking pictures, and there wasn't much to see that wasn't like much of what we have experienced the past couple of weeks.

Upon reaching Conway, we drove to Myrtle Beach State Park (a bit more than $37/night with power and water).  It has to be one of the larger parks we've been at, with over 300 campsites.  But we can take the dog on the beach anytime (until May 1, when restrictions begin).  And we are in a cluster of tiny campers, which is a bit of a surprise for us (about half are from Quebec, no doubt on their way home for the spring).

Headin' for the beach.

We pretty well froze when we got here.  It was windy, damp and cloudy, our campsite was well shaded and most likely our core temperatures had not fully recovered from the chilly ride.  It took all of our fleece and a fire to get us warmed back up again.

Today has been much more pleasant.  We've taken the opportunity to get caught up on laundry, rest and explore the beach...

Do I ALWAYS have to do all the work?

Just kiddin'!

Days 13 & 14: Elmwood Recreation Area, SC

There was no doubt that yesterday was supposed to be Alea's day to ride, as evidenced by this sign:

It seems Alea encounters nearly all of the closed bridges where we have traveled.  This one took us about 4 miles out of the way, though the worst part of that was that it added a couple extra miles to a particularly nasty stretch of highway with heavy truck traffic.

Coasting for a break on the way to Witherbee, SC.

We lucked out, finding a free campground in Francis Marion National Forest, so it wasn't necessary for us to do dispersed camping.  Which is just as well, as it is turkey hunting season right now, and we don't want to be anyone's accidental target.

Alea racked up a 60.5 mile solo ride (mostly with the help of a strong tail wind) from Givhans Ferry State Park to Jamestown, SC.  From there we drove out toward the coast to get to Elmwood Recreation Area (FREE, vault toilets and a water spigot [but water must be boiled]).  We opted to spend Friday and Saturday night here in order to avoid the weekend crowds at more popular destinations.

We've had a fairly nice campsite here.  It's far from any roads or railroads, and we haven't heard any hunters nearby.  There are a handful of neighbors, and everyone seems to want to keep to themselves.  Enough so that we can throw the ball for Lana several times throughout the day in the large meadow abutting our campsite.  To her, only a campground full of chipmunks could be better than this.

We are also allowed to gather wood here, which is great because it is cooling off.  The low tonight will be in the thirties and the highs the next couple of days will hover around 60 degrees.  So we are planning a large campfire to stay warm this evening, mostly using would left behind by earlier campers.

The view above our campsite.

We belatedly discovered that we could have found this campground at freecampsites.net, so we are thinking we'll check that site from time to time to see if we can find an occasional free campsite, especially over the next month or so while we are looking for ways to slow our pace.