36.8 mi / 12.1 mph / 157 ft. climbing
Home: Super 8 Motel

At 7am it was 38 degrees outside the tent, a chill we haven’t felt since somewhere in the mountains of New Zealand. This southern Georgia coast was the same temperature as our home towns of Chicago and Skaneateles, NY, surely a rare instance of equality. We were heading to a 3pm check-in motel tonight, so I fully endorsed lazing around in our warm sleeping bag until it got a bit warmer. But, we didn’t need to fully rely on the slow-rising sun; yesterday’s delivery of 15 sticks of firewood meant we could try something we’ve never done before: a morning fire!

It turned out to not be as great as it sounded. First, it didn’t take to burning as quickly and strongly as last night’s fire did; I’d reserved some of the driest pieces, and even used a proper firestarter (that I’d been carrying since Martha’s Vineyard), so I don’t know if was just the difference of the wood being 38 degrees vs. yesterday’s sun-warmed 70? Then, there is just too much going on with morning breakfast-making (especially when the air makes hot coffee and food cool so quickly) that throwing fire-tending into the mix threw off my whole routine. And then eating in our chairs close enough to the fire to feel its warmth took us away from the picnic table’s assistance, and it doesn’t take that long to actually eat anyway. By the time we were done, the sun had risen high enough to make it reasonably comfortable without the fire anyway.

Getting off of Blythe Island via the one access road of US-17 wasn’t much more fun than getting on the island yesterday. But once we hit a big intersection back on the mainland (and our first Winn-Dixie grocery store), all the cars scattered east and west, leaving US-17 comfortably empty again.

At Waverly the maps show something called the “Georgia Coast Rail Trail” paralleling US-17 as it turns 90-degrees to the south, but StreetView didn’t provide much evidence that it actually exists, and there was literally zero “heat” on the cycling heatmaps. But it exists! At least for 4 miles. As we were riding on US-17, I could see a bright line in the forest to our right, where the sun was able to slice through the gap that the railroad had made in the trees, so when it was time for lunch we cut over to it at the next crossroad. It served the same role as our lunch spot yesterday: wind-protected, but sunny, and only-belatedly did I realize that I’d set up our chairs right in the middle of the trail. No matter. While a dozen big pickup trucks passed on the cross-road while we ate, we didn’t see a single other trail user on this beautiful Saturday. Not surprising, really; Waverly just doesn’t seem like the sort of place where people have much interest in trails.

The surface was unpaved and pretty rough, so initially we assumed we’d pop back out to the unbusy highway after lunch, but we decided to give it a go for the 0.8 miles to the next crossing. And it turned out to be a lot of fun, a change of pace from the physical boredom and mental stress of highway riding, so we kept going. It had official signs posted (including mileage markers), and while we repeatedly got sticks stuck in our fenders or gears, it’s clearly mowed and maintained by someone for some reason. And we’re glad! The varied surface of gravel, pinecones, grass, and dirt was a bit bumpy, but we were still able to move pretty well on it.

Woodbine was the most-attractive town we’ve been through since Savannah, having more than the rural nothingness of Waverly, or Interstate-bypassed Eulonia, or the highway service-town of Richmond Hill. But it still suffered from the poor land-use decisions of this part of the country, these historical (as it presumably grew up with the railroad). It stretched for two or three miles along Highway 17, which was an obscene four lanes wide with a big median as it passed through the still-quiet forested area. It formed an uncomfortable barrier between businesses on each side of the “street”, and then those businesses were just splayed out along an unnecessarily long stretch, with the result being a lot of out-of-business establishments between the still-active ones. If they could shrink the whole town by a factor of 3, and consolidate all the spread-out activity in a tight core, the towns trajectory would turn upward from the downward slide that it appears to be on.

As we approached Kingsland we saw a sign saying the road was closed. Besides coming from a big electronic sign, it didn’t feel too serious since no further information appeared, and cars seemed to still be coming and going from the direction we were headed. It turns out it was “closed” for the Kingland Crawfish Festival! We wanted to get to our motel, so didn’t actually stop to listen to music or eat fried dough (or crawfish!), but it was fun to walk our bikes through the length of the festival and see a bit more of the people of the town than we otherwise would have. And by blocking a stretch of the highway we’d been on most of the day, it might have even made the traffic lighter for us!