Day 17

Glenn had to be at work at 7AM (poor guy), so as I got on the road it was still dark. I wanted to be out early anyway, and I'd gotten a full eight hours of sleep, so it really worked out perfectly. After a stop at a Waffle House for breakfast, and a Kroger for groceries, the sun had come up nicely, shining through a light fog. It was 65 degrees, and the fog would stick around for a few hours. Everything was softened by the fog, so it made for some pretty riding on my way to the Alabama border. Unfortunately, the road I was on smelled like a toilet, so that ruined some of the charm (it smelled like that for miles, so it must have been some kind of vegetation thing).

Around mile 18, Georgia Highway 20 turned into Alabama Highway 9, and I was into my sixth state of the trip, and the first I had never been in before (I had to recite the Ten Commandments before being allowed across the border). It was also my re-entry into Central Time, so my early-start day got an extra hour added in. Yesterday I did all 69 miles after 11AM, and today, I had done about 50 miles before 11AM.

The first big landmark in Alabama was crossing Weiss Lake on a very long bridge/causeway. Since I had so much time available, I then took an extended break in the Centre City Park catching up on a few emails (that I wasn't able to send out anyway). From there it was west on AL 68. The ride had been very flat up to about Centre, but then the hills started appearing. Luckily these hills were much more like the hills of Central Kentucky than the hills of the Appalachians. They were lightly drizzled across the landscape, falling in intermittent streaks and clumps, and not in layered, monolithic piles. This meant that it was fairly easy for the road to go around a hill rather than over it.

I stopped at the American Cafe in Collinsville for lunch. It seemed like every single person in the place knew each other (it wasn't a small cafe, I probably saw around 30 patrons), and people were constantly moving around to different tables to say hello to each other. After Collinsville I was passed by a lot of trucks packed full with chickens. While there are definitely worse smells in the world, you won't catch me drafting off a chicken truck anytime soon.

I have a complaint to make about road marker aesthetics. Both Georgia and Alabama mark their state highways with the number placed on a background that's the shape of the state. That's a cute idea, except that the states are too tall and narrow to fit two-digit numbers inside, so what they do is widen the shapes of the states into fatass Georgia and fatass Alabama. That's just not right. If your state isn't of the correct aspect ratio to hold two- and three-digit numbers inside, come up with some other shape! However, I do have to give Alabama credit for their rumble-strip approach. Tiny grooves are actually embedded in the white stripe that marks the edge of the roadway, so that's the only space they take up.

After being bothered by the road signs for a while, I eventually neared Lake Guntersville, and Guntersville State Park. By this time and place, temperatures had risen into the 90s (nearly 30 degrees warmer than the morning), and I was fighting a bit of a headwind which I haven't had to do for a while. After doing a lot of camping on this trip, I had begun to think that there is some sort of conspiracy going on to keep liquor at least ten miles away from state parks. It seems like there is never a town or even a gas station selling beer near a state park. Here, there were no towns, but I did come across a small grocery store about five miles from the park. And living up to the conspiracy, they didn't sell beer. So I continued on my way and made it to the entrance of the state park. Right across the street was another small grocery, and amazingly, this one DID sell beer! So I was able to be living the High Life tonight. I spooke a bit with the clerk at the store, and she recommended heading up the road a couple miles to another campground (still in the state park) which was supposedly even nicer than the one right across the street. So I followed her advice and got myself a site right on the lake for $7.63. There doesn't seem to be anything in the campground rules prohibiting alcohol (unlike the state parks in every other state I've been in), so perhaps that's why the conspiracy was broken in this case. I cooked myself up some couscous (cooks in no time and uses hardly any fuel!), showered, and then it was dark before 8:00, which means it's time for bed.