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!