34.7 mi / 12.7 mph / 264 ft. climbing
Home: Econo Lodge

Before we left, the Edisto Motel served us a final example of why it’s a special place. Nathan and Taryn(?) were in front of their room a couple doors down from us, and it turned out they were fellow travelers with whom we had quite a bit in common. They had been walking (for Jesus), rather than riding (for themselves), but had spent 18 weeks toting all they needed in a red cart, seeing much of the unseen country that lies between Michigan and here. It was enlightening (and obvious in retrospect) to realize how much our bicycles differentiate us from “homeless people” in observers’ minds. Like us, our new friends are technically “homeless”, but it’s by choice, and they can become un-homeless whenever they want to. But unlike us they have a harder time convincing people of that, whether it’s police hassling them, or people wanting to give them money.

We had time to chat because we had a relatively-short ride to another motel today, but with the forecasted rain not yet making an appearance, we got going while the sun poked occasionally through the clouds (Susan had said we could stay in our room as long as we wanted if we’d needed to wait for the weather to clear out). Despite Susan’s recommendation to continue on US-17 (on the promise that it got a comfortable shoulder and cut through the beautiful ACE Basin), we stuck with my plan to take a more-inland route.

We’d gotten a few rounds of drizzle before lunch, but it returned more steadily after we’d eaten. Enough to wet upward-facing surfaces of our clothes, but not enough to fill our shoes. Even at these barely-uncomfortable amounts, it was the most rain pedaled through in 53 days, seven states ago! And that’s not even because we’ve been avoiding rain by taking off-days. We have to go back six months, in New Zealand, to find the last time we specifically avoided riding due to rain! In other words, this has been an exceptionally dry period for both us and the East Coast.

Even though we weren’t on US-17, I think we still got to see a lot of the ACE Basin, and perhaps even more of it because we didn’t need to focus on traffic. We’ve pedaled through rain forests and deserts, mountains and beaches, redwoods and corn fields. It sort of feels like we must have “seen it all” by this point, but this southeastern edge of North American continent manages to surprise us with an entirely new topography. And how wonderful it is that the land can still surprise us. This is the true “lowcountry”, where much of the ground we cycled past on either side of the road was skim-coated in water, and it had nothing to do with the rain. The natural state of the land here is to be hidden under black water, but not hidden so well that tree seeds can’t find it and take root.

Despite the unfamiliarity, this is a place where the landscape itself speaks. I said yesterday that the dikes-and-swamps topography of Magnolia Plantation brought me right back to the Keralan backwaters, and I felt the same memories today. The locals in India had converted old rice barges into houseboats to bring tourists like us into their backwaters, and here, half-a-world away, the main crop grown in the long-gone plantation days, in these South Carolina backwaters was…rice!

Similarly, Rett commented how the water looked so black. Well, isn’t that just due to the cloudiness, or being in the shade of the trees, or the fact that it isn’t flowing? No, it turns out that this is one of the few places in the world outside of the Amazon known for its “black water rivers”, where the tannins from the trees and the low/no-flow combine to make the water truly black (or Coca-Cola-colored when it’s only an inch deep).

In a time when Wikipedia provides most of the information about the places we’re traveling through, it’s so much more satisfying when observation and past experience can create insight on their own (…which I then backed up by checking Wikipedia…)

The drizzle mostly stopped for the last chunk of miles to our motel, letting us dry out somewhat before bringing ourselves and the bikes into our room. We couldn’t tell whether the innkeeper (who could easily have been from Kerala) was offering, or demanding that we put our bikes in his first-floor but unsecured storage/junk room; we chose to assume “offering”, and after seeing all the space in our 2nd-floor room, decided to decline his “offer” and lug them up the stairs and inside). We’re in sight (and sound) of I-95 (also for the first time since New England), and while there are three hotels, three gas stations, and three fast-food restaurants at this highway interchange, there have been no proper grocery stores since early yesterday. So I made the ride back out in the returned drizzle and returned with some Wendy’s, and a surprise batch of Rett’s Mexican Doraditas from the BP gas station!