Al showed me the laptop's screen. "How does this look for tomorrow's ride?" I squinted up my eyes with concern. He was heading us right past the State Port, the fourth busiest container port in the United States. That meant lots of big, big trucks.Actually, the overall route looked pretty good. Al had decided to skip the customary bike routes into South Carolina. They swung wide around the State Port, adding a lot of very uninteresting miles. Al's direct route (with the trucks) was just 7 miles of pretty decent 4-lane highway. After that, the truck traffic went way down. A few miles more through a small Georgia town and crossing the Savannah River on an old trestle bridge and we were in a lovey area of South Carolina. OK. I could do trucks for 7 miles. Easy peasy.
Big trucks aren't that bad really. I'd rather ride among professional big-rig drivers than regular car drivers any day.
So off we pedaled. The trucks were noisy and intimidating, but they weren't much of a problem. We wheeled into South Carolina, pedaled through the Wildlife Refuge, then headed towards the lovely Lowcountry town of Bluffton. Part-way there Al signaled a stop. "Would you mind if we didn't ride all the way to Bluffton?" he asked. Ha! I was happy to swing to another route. The infamous South Carolina secondary roads were beating us up big time. This particular road was cracked, raggedy, and filled with scattered small holes. We talked over some options, picked one, and got back to pedaling.
It turned out to be a great ride, even without a visit to the charming town of Bluffton. And we found another giant critter statue! This time a Great Dane.
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| A giant Great Dane outside the Great Dane Trailers building. |
