Bicycling Florida to Texas
Through
Alabama, Mississippi,
Arkansas & Oklahoma
2008 - May - June
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Grove Hill to Linden AL
Distance: 43.6 Miles
This morning we got up, to find that we had another flat tire on the front tire. So before riding to breakfast we changed the tire. We then rode about ¼ mile to a fast food breakfast place. Not real good but enough for us to start the day. We then rode back to the motel and picked up our luggage.
Yesterday we totally changed today's route, well not the town we left or where we ended up. We left the "Adventure Cycling Route" which was 70 miles long and instead traveled to Linden by the shortest route, straight north on highway 43. The first 16 miles was on a 4 lane divided highway. We were going north and that was really a good thing because the south bound travelers had to climb higher on almost all up hills and the bottom of the hills were lower than the north bound lanes. It appears that the south bound lanes were the original 2 lane highway and the north bound lanes were built later when most highway construction included more cutting and filling to reduce highway grades. It was a good ride not much traffic and very cool. The rest of the trip was on a 2 lane road that did not have any shoulders. This was much better than Highway 59 where the highway had shoulders but a rumble strip covered the entire shoulder. Without a shoulder, traffic was willing to wait instead of insisting on shoving the bicycle onto the rumble strip shoulder. We stopped about 12 miles out of town at an old abandoned building where we sat on the steps in the shade and ate some fresh peaches we had bought from a farmer in Grove Hill.
We arrived in Linden about noon; we are one of two guests in the motel tonight. Jim cleaned our tire chain and the bicycle before we put it in the room; we then walked about 6 blocks before we found some food. We both had a salad for lunch (at 2:00) and then returned to the motel room, to relax and make some phone calls. At supper time we walked a block to a gas station where they make fresh pizza's which we took back to the motel room to eat. We are both very glad we did not cycle over 70 miles today. It is more fun to have more time to relax.
|
