Savannah to Walterboro

We headed off from Savannah at a good hour of the morning headed to the home of Warmshowers host Ron in Walterboro.  Riding through Savannah in the morning was a little convoluted as we decided to avoid the main bridge and go around through a wildlife refuge adding a few miles but being law-abiding cyclists.  Mixed results.  Routing involved lots of truck traffic (basically went the port route) but followed by a beautiful few miles through the refuge and, drumroll, I finally saw an alligator!!!  So happy.  I'd been trying to spot one since New Orleans.  Getting back on the well-known Route 17 made for some great riding, though through one of those funny moments I stopped to have a snack and saw Sam riding up the road towards me.  Turns out he did a lot more truck-road-sharing than necessary as he missed a turn.  It did mean, however, that we wound up riding together for the next few hours as he slowed to a leisurely pace and we found some great frontage roads.

Check out my new friend

Important moment in history:  It was Sam, not Naomi, who suggested we stop to take a picture of the beautiful swampy forest

By now an expert at changing flats.  Also allows for the tortoise to catch the hare and means that I can even get a nap in the sun while he changes his tube!

Other highlights of the day included lunch stop at the gas station (sweet rural riding roads mean not a ton of food options) for some mac and cheese and 'potato wedges' for me and 'murder fingers' (chicken strips) for Sam that were circumstantially delicious.  Sam rode off into the sunset for the last dozen miles or so only to be thwarted by the great equalizer: a flat tire.  I had been mellowly plodding along, contemplating whether it would be justified to pull over and have a nap but concerned about the number of dogs in yards around, so it seemed like fate.  I got a nap in the sun while it was all sorted out.  We wound up at Ron's around 5 and had a lovely evening, joined by two other warm-shower-seekers from Europe!  A delicious dinner, plus tastes of Ron's 'hobby' (wine-maker extraordinaire), had me looking forward to a low mileage day of riding into Charleston all together in the 'morrow.