Alabama Interruptus

Alabama the Beautiful
This is my first post about why I'm riding, and here's where to donate to Water Life Hope.  Donating is the most fun you'll have all week.

May 12: Joe Wheeler State Park, Rogersville to Huntsville, 37 miles by bike 13 by bus.

Yesterday's ride convinced us that the Strava Global Heat Map was better than the Google bike map routes, so we decided to stick to Strava for the trip into Huntsville.  The first bit of the ride was peaceful.  It was Sunday morning in the country.  With no Episcopal churches nearby, Steve and I headed out with our little handmade route.

The first part of the route was wonderful.  Locals grinned and waved to us from pickup trucks as they went by.  We passed St. Paul's Missionary Baptist Church, with a prominent and incongruous "No Trespassing" sign in the driveway.  The parking lot was full anyway, and the place actually looked friendly enough.  When we stopped to check the map two body-wagging puppies started licking Steve's leg, then came to visit me.  The sun shone and the air was humid.  We were close to home.  Best of all, the Alabama drivers behaved as though they were on the Natchez Trace, carefully passing us in the opposite lane.

Steve, Michael the incredibly helpful Warm Showers host,
Carol and me
Carol drove the bus at first, then Steve and Carol swapped roles some miles down the road.   The ride was the same for a while.  Farms and fields rolled by and the traffic that we met was light enough for the drivers to be able to pass us quickly.  Then we passed Alabama Highway 31, which appears to create a disturbance in the Force.  Traffic thickened.  The drivers remained polite and careful, with the notable exception of a Huntsville police car.  He buzzed us.

We stuck it out to Balch Rd, just a few miles out of town.  Steve arrived in the bus and responded to my frantic signals.  We were still on the most used bicycle route going into Huntsville, white-hot on the Strava Global Heat Map, but it was menacing.  The desire to get home in one piece led us to load the bikes up again and head into downtown for a look around.

Our Warm Showers host Michael confirmed our choice later.   Throwing in the towel at Balch Rd was probably for the best.  He helped us construct a plausible route to Guntersville but gently told us there was no good north-south route through Alabama.  None.  Would we be better off going through Birmingham?  No, worse.  We panned and zoomed through the Strava map, combed through Google maps and imagery and couldn't come to another conclusion.  Still, we'd ride to Guntersville tomorrow.  Figure it out later.

May 13: Huntsville to Guntersville, 44 miles by bike.  

Michael had made specific edits to our route to filter out the big climbs that we all expected east of Huntsville.  So Carol and I rolled through scenes that looked like Celestial Seasonings boxes over relatively flat roads.  We stopped in New Hope for lunch, meeting Steve and the bus.  Carol went across the street for a burger in the only place in town.  There was a pay phone on the wall.

This time the second half of the route was as good as the first.  Towards the end there was a missing bit of shoulder on US 431 going into Guntersville.  No matter.  We dragged them across a quarter mile or so of grass to where the shoulder picked up again.  We waved at fishermen from the bridge and cruised into town.

So we looked over our options.  The big looming dark places in the Strava map, the places where no bicycle dares to go, remained stubbornly in place.  So we've decided to camp tonight in Guntersville -- cheap and beautiful -- and drive to Weaver, the end of the Chief Ladiga Trail.  It's Alabama interruptus, but we'll come home in one piece.  And on the good side, we've discovered this really terrific route between Huntsville and Guntersville that's worth doing again.  We'll spend the last few days of the tour riding the Chief Ladiga and Silver Comet Trails, and making a side trip to Cave Spring where Carol has never visited.  And we'll definitely be home Friday.  Just thinking the word -- home -- feels happy.

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