Day Thirty Six - Rainy Day Sunday and Five Week Stats

The rain stopped long enough for us to tear down camp and get packed up. We rode ten miles to breakfast at "Another Broken Egg". It was the only breakfast place around and in hindsight we were happy about that because it was amazing (see photos)! It was overcast all day with a light rain much of the time. It only rained hard once and we were able to duck under cover and chill for awhile, so we never got soaked. We rode along some beautiful beaches and towns, as well as some pretty tacky stretches. After sleeping in our "tent saunas" last night, we have opted for an air conditioned hotel room tonight. We've got tents and rain flies draped all over the room so they can dry out. It was a short day - 50 miles - to Panama City.

Stats Through Five Weeks (a day late):

Miles: 2,443

Flats: 42 (only THREE this week)

Additions to Road Kill: chicken

Destiny Rescue TTD: $10,212 WOW!

Riders Added: 1 (Zack, who is keeping us laughing!)

Day Thirty Five - Gorgeous Beaches

The Gulf Coast is absolutely gorgeous! Pensacola, Navarre, Fort Walton, Destin and Santa Rosa beaches had clear greenish blue water and white sand, AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS!

We stopped for lunch at The Slippery Mermaid in Navarre and had the best sushi we have ever had! Then headed to Destin to indulge in some ice cream, but on the way Rick got a flat. While we were fixing the flat, a man named Larry Dean pulled over to see if we needed anything. He had a an air compressor in his trunk, wow! It didnt work at first but he was determined to make it work! Eventually he got it to work and we were on our way. What a kind gentleman!

We made it to camp 79 miles later. The park ranger told us that it would probably rain, so Rick set up a tarp over our picnic table to keep everything but our tents dry. It did rain gently through the night.

Day Thirty Four - Plan B

We spent last night at the Dauphin Island Campground, located across the street from the ferry dock. The first ferry of the day is at 8am, so we made sure we were there by 7:40am. As we left camp, Zack realized he had a flat tire, so he walked his bike to the ferry planning to change it on board. Unfortunately we soon learned that the ferry was shut down due to mechanical problems and would not be running for at least five hours (possibly days). Please understand that the entire reason we had routed our trip through the Island was to avoid having to ride all the way around Mobile Bay and through the city of Mobile, AL, which is exactly what we now had to do! This made today's ride 92 miles rather than the 70 that we had planned. Today's ride would have been even longer had we not taken the tunnel under the Mobile River which added a lot of fear and trepidation to our trip since the tunnel is not intended for bicycles. On the plus side, Mobile turned out to be quite nice and we were able to meet up with Dan Hunter, who works in Mobile, so Zack could get a few important items he had forgotten at their house. Our route also took us by Battleship Memorial Park. We had never seen a battleship before and it was quite impressive!

The last 15 to 20 miles in Alabama were miserable, as we rode on 6"-15" wide shoulder between rumble strips and grass along a busy highway. We prayed that the shoulder would get better once we hit Florida. Thank God once we hit the Florida line, not only was the shoulder better, it was brand new pavement with a 3 foot wide bike lane!

Amazingly we have been in four states in the past three days. We crossed our last state line today, but it will take our final week to get across Florida!

Day Thirty-Three - Sweet Home Alabama

After a wonderful breakfast at the Hunters, we rode out on the beach road following the coast line into Alabama. Eventually our 73 mile route took us over a dramatic causeway bridge to Dauphin Island. We stopped at the only grocery store on the island to pick up food for dinner. A kind gentleman, fellow shopper asked us about out trip. When he learned that we were staying at the campground tonight, he offered to take our groceries to our campsite. As we had room on our bikes, we thanked him, but did not take him up on his offer and rode on to the campground. Once here, we were surprised when the same man pulled up in his pick up truck and offered to take us out on his boat. We accepted and John treated us to a wonderful hour long tour of the island by boat. The padded seats and ocean breezes were heavenly! We are so enjoying southern hospitality!

INCREDIBLE NEWSFLASH.....we have reached our goal for Destiny Rescue!! Thanks so much to all who have given so generously!! We are excited to see how much more will be added to the $10,000, we are in AWE!!

Day Thirty Two - Zack Attack/Tours by Tonia

Today's ride breaks down into two chapters: Chapter 1- Leaving Louisiana and Chapter 2- Mississippi.

We rode out through the French Quarter and got onto 90 East. We spent most of the morning drafting behind Zack. Thirty five miles into the ride Zack went through his initiation by getting his first flat tire (our only one of the day). Once we crossed the Pearl River, entering Mississippi, we met up with Tonia Miller who rode with us the rest of the day. It was a real treat to have a local guide us through some lovely back roads. She even treated us to lunch (huge muffaletta sandwiches). She got us to the home of Dan and Lee Ann Hunter where we enjoyed their beautiful pool overlooking the bay before being treated to a spectacular meal!

Today's total mileage was 89. It was fun having others to ride with today. The scenery was gorgeous! We have been very impressed by the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Day Thirty One - Grand Tour of New Orleans

We met up with Brian today who lead us on a bicycle tour of New Orleans. We saw it all, from the warehouse district to the garden district, Tulane University to New Orleans sculpture garden, and out to the lower 9th ward, which was so badly devastated by hurricane Katrina. Although it was our day off, we ended up riding 28 miles, but it was a great way to see the city!

We ended the day with a wonderful dinner out at Nola, an Emeril Lagasse restaurant. Perfect ending to a perfect day! Now packing up for another early start and heading to Biloxi, MS tomorrow!

Day Thirty - Now with Fifty Percent More

Linda and Mark gave us a great send off this morning. We jumped on Airline Highway and rode it all the way to New Orleans. It now seems humorous, but on the first Louisiana bridge we've seen that has a shoulder, we were pulled over by an officer who told us that it is illegal to cross any bridge in Louisiana on bicycle. Oh the irony!

We made the 75 miles to New
Orleans in great time and with no flats. As we walked into our hotel lobby we were greeted by our son Zack, who flew in from Charleston today. He will join us for the remainder of the bike trip.

We met up with Brian Sands, one of Rick's friends from college who lives here. We enjoyed dinner together, followed by coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde. Brian then gave us a tour of the French Quarter. We are looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.

Day Twenty Nine - Water Crossings

The challenge in Louisiana is getting across bodies of water. Today presented two such challenges. The first was the Atchafalaya Basin - a huge swath of real estate (swamp) covering much of south central Louisiana. There are only three roads that cross it and only two go to Baton Rouge. I-10 would have been a direct shot, but since bikes aren't allowed we had to ride 28 miles north to pick up 190 and then head east. The second challenge was getting across the Mississippi River on a huge bridge with no shoulder.

Louisiana roads are the absolute worst! Today was long (95 miles), hot (101.5 degrees) and traffic was crazy busy! At certain points of the ride we would lose the shoulder, mainly when we would go over super long bridges (5 miles long!!!).

When we finally got to Mark and Linda Hunter's in Baton Rouge, we were so happy to see them! Linda made us an unbelievable dinner which included crawfish pie, jambalaya, and even homemade bread, it was so delicious!

Day Twenty Eight - Smooth Sailing and Four Week Stats

Today we stayed on Route 90 all day, riding 70 miles to Scott, LA, a suburb of Lafayette, LA. 90 was a welcome respite from the insanity of I-10 where bicycles are not allowed in Louisiana (after yesterday, we understand why). We fought a modest headwind again all day but managed to average 15mph for over three hours and had knocked off 52 miles before lunch.

We are spending the night at an awesome campground after making a delicious dinner, which included pork chops, potatoes, and zucchini.

Our RKOTD (road kill of the day) was the armadillo. As we saw three of them - that's three times the number we saw in two weeks in Texas!

Today marks the end of our fourth week with only 12 days remaining and 11 days of riding left! The fourth week stats are as follows:

Miles: 1,914

Flats: 39 (have not had to change a tire in the last 36 hours!)

Road Kill Zoo: alligator, armadillos, frogs, wild boar, turtles

Live Animals: tons of birds, dolphins

Unbelievable Sightings: virtually every city we come to, there are both a Dollar General store and Family Dollar store! Also, at the grocery store today, we saw the ad for bird cleaning services, WHAT?

Gatorade: stats remain the same, but we are thankful that through the month of September, most stations offer two 32oz. Gatorades for $3!!

Destiny Rescue TTD: $8,755!!

Day Twenty Seven - King Oil

While the hotels in Ozona and Sonora were filled with oil men working and drilling for oil, the hotels in Port Arthur are full of men who work in the refineries. The Port Arthur area is home to a slew of refineries.

We woke up at 5am today hoping to get an early start, but notices we had two flat tires. By the time we got the flats changes, got packed up and had breakfast, it was 8:30am when we finally got on the road.

On good advice from others, we took the long cut to Lake Charles, LA - 100 miles for the day! Our elevation varied from 2 feet below sea level to 130 feet above ( see crazy bridge photo). All of our hills were bridges or overpasses.
Did we mention that we finally made it out of Texas? It only took us 15 days!

We were surrounded by water all day, riding south along Sabine Lake, then east along Louisiana's Gulf Coast (even there we saw many off shore driving platforms and on shore storage tanks), and then north through the bayou. Even though much of our day was spent in and around the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, the only wildlife we saw were ducks, birds and 1 turtle. In spite of assurances that we would see gators and caution gator signs, thus far alligators in Louisiana appear to be as rare as armadillos were in Texas.

Thank God we had no flats once we left the hotel.

Once close to Lake Charles, we got back on route 10 hoping to ride ten miles to our destination. This stretch of highway was clearly not intended for cyclists. After five intense miles, we bailed and took the GPS 12 mile loop around. After making it across hundreds of miles of desert and arid lands, the challenge in Louisiana is a surplus of water (namely getting across open water). Thanks for all the prayers, we sure need them!

Day Twenty Six - Oh Dirk, where art Thou?

We got up early and rode along the beach into a gorgeous sunrise! After stopping at Denny's to slam down a grand slam breakfast, we headed to the east end of the island to catch the ferry to Port Bolivar. We spotted scores of dolphins on the ride over.

Today's blog is dedicated to Jim, Dirk, Duane and Zack, the guys that Rick bikes with every year. Dirk is a superhero and his special power is cutting through headwinds like a hot knife through butter! Once off the ferry, we fought a headwind for the next 79 miles (today's total was 82 miles). Dirk, where were you when we needed you?

Duane (whose currently looking for a new house), we found you a cute little fixer-upper right across from the beach. Sure it needs a little work, but the views are spectacular and the price has to be great! (see pic, not of the blue house) The blue house is a typical home on the island, it was amazing how high off the ground they were. The locals told us that after Hurricane Ike, the coding was 16 feet above sea level.

We stopped to make our lunch in High Island Exxon, elevation 36 feet. Once again we met several interested locals, including a cyclists named Mike. He helped us out with tomorrows route to Lake Charles, LA and even gave us a spare tire he was carrying on his bike (his company makes them). He also shared a photo of a large water moccasin that lunged at him on his ride today! Thankfully we didn't see any of them today. However we did see many interesting creatures, some living and some road kill. Living included bottle nose dolphins, tons of birds, snowy egrets, and ducks. The road kill included raccoons, snakes, brown owl, two large wild boar, and a flattened alligator!!!

We are do tired! Time to call it a day!

Day Twenty Five - Police Escort Out of Houston/Space Shuttle Endeavor Arrives in Houston

After a quick breakfast and seeing our relatives off to school and work, we started on our adventure of getting across the city of Houston. Thanks to some expert guidance from Judy's friend Keith, we were able to get into the heart of the city largely on some beautiful bike paths. Once downtown, we were trying to figure out how to get out to Route 3 which would take us to Galveston, TX. Officer Wick was on bike patrol and came to our rescue. Not only did he give us directions, he also escorted us out of downtown.

As we headed south on Route 3, traffic came to a standstill. At breakfast this morning we read about the Space Shuttle Endeavor landing in Houston today. As it turned out, the airport hosting the Shuttle was right on the left side of Route 3 and the traffic jam was people going to see the shuttle. So we made an unexpected field trip to see Endeavor. How often do you get to be a hundred feet away from a Space Shuttle strapped to the back of a 747?!?!

Field Trip concluded, we went on to Galveston, TX. Riding over the bridge to the island was quite exciting! Galveston is beautiful and very different from the Texas we have seen this far. We are staying in a hotel overlooking the beach, we are glad we pedaled the 64 miles to come this way!

We forgot to mention yesterday that we spotted a dead armadillo in the road, that's one!