Me, Missee and Dallas before leaving Charleston

After spending a day walking around Charleston, Dallas and I spent one more night at Charles and Missee’s house before heading out on Monday morning.  Missee made possibly the best grits I had ever tasted, mixed with eggs.

The bridge between Charleston and Mount Pleasant

We didn’t ride very far before stopping for coffee and lunch at the Village Bakery in Mount Pleasant (on the other side of the bridge from Charleston).  The 7-layer bar was probably the best thing I’ve tasted in a long time, and I highly recommend it.  When traveling, we want to go everywhere and try all the food, but we obviously can’t afford to do so, so we have to be choosy.  These are the hardest choices, since we can’t just go back another day and try something else on the menu.  That 7-layer bar was one of the best choices I’ve made on this trip.  I usually end up liking whatever Dallas ordered better than what I ordered, so it’s a good thing Dallas is okay with sharing everything.

When we got back on our bikes, we rode for a long time before coming to anywhere worth stopping.  The only stop we made was to duck out of the rain under the awning of an abandoned convenience store while a storm passed briefly.  When we were almost to Georgetown (only 13 miles to go), we took a turn off the main road at the direction of Google maps.  Google maps bike directions sometimes will take us out of the way to put us on designated bike trails or to take us off busy roads with dangerous traffic.  Unfortunately, it often screws up.

A flower I saw somewhere along the route…

I didn’t notice the chain across the path we turned onto until I had ridden straight into it and had broken the padlock with ease.  Oops.  We should have turned around and gone back then.  Instead, we continued down the overgrown tick and mosquito infested trail that Google maps wanted us to take.  Not halfway down this trail (or at least less than half the distance we were supposed to be on this trail), Dallas expressed how horrible it would be if the path just came to a dead end and we couldn’t get through.  Shortly after Dallas had voiced his fears, the trail narrowed, went down a steepish hill with even taller grass and ended abruptly in the thick woods.  We turned back and rode about a mile towards the road we turned off of before trying out a different trail in the hopes that it might go all the way through so we can continue to follow the purple line on Garmin.  This trail was so sandy that it was impossible to maintain control of our bikes, and once stopped, incredibly difficult to start again without sinking into the sand – not to mention the mosquitoes that would flock to us the moment we stopped moving forward.  Frustrated (and hungry), we rode all the way back to the main highway 17, losing about 6.5 miles and close to an hour of cycling.  We still had 13 miles to go to get to the town.

He’s probably really hungry by now…

Fortunately, there was plenty of daylight left.  Still, not many places were open when we arrived in Georgetown, and we were both starving.  We ate at Limpin Janes, a restaurant right on the dock.  The food was fresh, healthy, not too expensive, and very tasty, and some locals gave us some tips on where we could get a shower that night.

After dinner, we rode a mile or two to a marina, walked our bikes down the dock, and washed ourselves and our clothes in their showers.  It was pitch dark when we emerged from the bathrooms. We still had to find a place to sleep that night, so we hopped on our bikes and continued riding north on highway 17.  We didn’t want to ride too far in the dark on such a busy road with no real shoulder, so we turned into the first place we found.

The camp site was not ideal, but we had ridden 77 miles that day and were ready to pass out.  I didn’t even bring my sleeping bag into the tent.  Whatever the place was, we were pretty sure it was private property and we couldn’t tell how visible our tent and bikes would be in the daylight, so we prepared for an early departure.