Alabama again, and on to Georgia

I pulled out of the parking lot of my shady home for a night at a little before 6:00am. Locals had been telling me all day yesterday that today was supposed to be record highs. They might have been right; I never saw the temp. For the sake of time, I rode 18 miles before eating anything (no good food available in Bonifay, I would have had to backtrack 2 miles to get food). Biking on an empty stomach sucks. I eventually found a Subway and got the Orchard Chicken Salad. I recommend it. I made my way from there through Dothan, AL, and on towards Blakely, GA.

During one stretch of road a bunch of logging trucks kept going back and forth. Most of the local traffic and most of the logging trucks responded well to the presence of a bicycle on the road. There was one jerk amongst the logging truckers. When he was about a half mile back, he just laid on his horn and made it clear that he was not going to move anywhere or slow down, and I had to take the ditch. Size wins. I was tempted to respond with a fairly universal gesture of disapproval, but my conscience won (aided by the MDS logo on my back).

On my way from Dothan, AL, to Blakely, GA, I crossed the Chattahoochee River (State #5). Sometimes when I'm out biking and I see something that reminds me of a song, even a song I don't know well, that song sticks for a while. I was down yonder by the Chattahoochee, and it was hot, though I can't speak much to the analogy Alan Jackson uses to describe the heat. Several days ago I rode through a town called Pascagoula. It was close enough to the name of the town in that one song with the squirrel that gets in, runs amok, and starts a revival in a baptist church. Well, if no one else knows what I'm talking about, I think my parents should. They have got to be the only reason I would have ever heard that song.

When I pulled in to Blakely, GA, I didn't know where I was going to sleep. It took me a heck of a lot longer than I thought it would to get from Dothan to Blakely, but later I realized that the Chattahoochee River also marks the line between Central and Eastern time zones. I ended up calling a state park 6 miles north of Blakely just after they had closed, but a woman was still in the office. She said that if I'd hurry, she'd wait for me. I told her I was on a bicycle and that it'd probably be 30 minutes. She said she'd stick around until I got there. The camp site is very well kept and quiet. I don't think people come camp out here much. I do have some neighbors that are quite friendly, even though their chihuahua isn't. Tomorrow I should make it to Americus, GA, where I will visit a friend and Hesston College Disaster Management graduate Alyssa Hostetler. I intend to take a day off the bike to clean it and let my legs rest before delving further into the rolling terrain of Georgia towards the ominous Appalachian Mountains. Seriously, they scare me.

And here's the camp site.

And the view.

And here's my spacious home.