24.5 mi / 12.7 mph / 123 ft. climbing
Home: Dauphin Island Campground

Yesterday’s warm morning was exceeded today, with my thermometer reading 71℉ at 7am. In a few days, very few places in the country are expected to have a high temperature that reaches 70℉, so I guess we’re glad to enjoy this freakish weather while it lasts? It meant that the forecast of morning rain was less of a concern, since we didn’t need to worry about getting chilled in the wet. And while there were isolated light passing showers all morning, the tent was actually drier than it had been on recently “dry” but dewy mornings.

I was proud of the 2-day plan I’d come up with to get us from the southeast corner of (surprisingly-large) Mobile Bay to its namesake city on the northwest shore. The obvious route would be to head north overland, and then west across the head of the bay. But if we instead first headed west along the Gulf Coast to Dauphin Island (where we could camp), we would then have big southerly tailwinds the next day pushing us straight into Mobile. And it would be a more-direct route, since most traffic from the east into Mobile gets squeezed through two unbikeable tunnels, requiring us to make a large detour even further north.

The problem with my plan was that it required a ferry to get us across the mouth of the bay, from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island, and it was unclear if the weather system bringing today’s rain and tomorrow’s strong tailwinds would prevent the ferry from running. To get to the Fort Morgan ferry terminal requires literally a 25-mile ride down a “dead-end” road, so if we got there and found the ferry was cancelled, we’d be totally screwed. The uncertainty had kept me awake and plotting that “obvious”-but-inferior route instead, just because it began feeling like too much of a risk for us to take the better route.

But, luckily the Mobile Bay Ferry has the best communications team of any ferry we’ve ever taken (and we’ve taken a lot!) Every day they make a status post on Facebook, update it throughout the day as the boat fills, and respond to comments. At 7:30am, they posted that high winds in the afternoon meant they would not be allowing pedestrians/bikes, because they assume if you aren’t bringing your car on, you’ll need to make a round-trip to return to your car, and they couldn’t guarantee that the return boat would run. Well, that uncertainty essentially settled it for me, we would skip the ferry and take a junky inland route, but as a last check I posted a comment explaining our situation (and basically saying “we’re gonna skip the ferry, unless you really think we shouldn’t!”) Fourteen minutes later I got a response saying that it was only late afternoon when the winds would become a problem, so we should be fine with the 1:15pm boat we were targeting. Then, an hour later (just as we were leaving camp), they followed up with a second reply, relaying that the captain said we’d be good even on the 3:30pm boat. Amazing, thank you! Dauphin Island, here we come!

We got sprinkled on a couple of times early in the ride, but remained mostly dry, and it was sunny and hot by the time we reached the ferry. We got there about 10 minutes before boarding, long enough for me to slap together a sandwich for myself, but Rett’s would have to wait until we were on the boat.

In just the last day or two we must have crossed an invisible border that divides East Coast snowbirds from Midwest snowbirds, because the license plates have completely changed. Of the ~8 plates I saw driving onto the ferry, there were two each from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It makes sense, Lake Michigan is now directly north of us, but it’s still striking how strong the “minimal miles to drive to warmth” effect is.

Once the ferry reached Dauphin Island, we didn’t even need to ride our bikes to get to the campground. We just walked them across the road and through the campground’s back gate. On our way in we scouted out various options for rain shelter, and settled on a big “community center”-type building in the middle of the city-run campground. The rain showers returned shortly after we got set up, so while Rett took shelter indoors, I cooked dinner back at our site in my rain jacket, which was even less-uncomfortable than I thought it would be. If the evening’s one heavy dumping had occurred while I was cooking, I probably would have felt differently, but luckily we were both back indoors and eating by the time that happened.

While I was packing things away post-dinner, I noticed the burning glow of sunset under the rain clouds, so I made a snap decision to run down the trail behind our site that led to the beach on the Gulf side. Discovering the expanse of firm white sand without another soul around welled up an excitement inside me that flashed me back to some of my early bike tours. I’m sure that echo resonated mostly because I hadn’t had the chance to grab Rett, and while the rare bit of complete independence brought back the feeling of years long past, I still would have preferred to have her along to experience the discovery with me.