Vickie's Ramblings: Two great days!

Yesterday's &; Today's Mileage:57 and 37
Cumulative Elevation Gain: 400 and 200 feet
Weather: Hot and humid, to pleasant and sunny
Attitude: Relaxed and happy

The last two days have been very pleasant rides through mostly unremarkable scenery. Woods and farms and a few small towns. I rode in the van for the first 40 miles yesterday because I had no interest in riding 97 miles. Today's ride would've been 73 miles, which I'm sure I could've done, but we had to catch a ferry at the 35-mile point at 11:15 (or wait another 3 hours after that) and I did not want to ride feeling like I had to keep looking at my watch, so decided to ride in the van again as far as the ferry.

Yesterday we had a brisk tailwind for nearly the entire day, and today's very short 37 miles made for a very relaxing day. Smooth roads too, and very little traffic. The only logging truck I saw all day was not even on the road, and we had a 10 mile stretch where the road was actually closed to traffic (although they let us through) and had just been newly paved. Sweet.

We passed dozens of tiny cemeteries today, some right next to the road; some at the back edge of fields, with no road to them; some right at the edge of yards. Anywhere from a half dozen to several dozen gravestones, some newer, some old. None of the cemeteries were marked with any type of name. I stopped and looked at gravestones in one. Most were from the early 1900's, and about half of them were babies, Many of the babies' stones did not even have dates, just "Baby Smith", "Baby Jones". There were four little "Baby Stubbs" stones in a row. Hard times.

Oldest church in S. Carolina, constructed 1734

Baby Stubbs grave, 4 of these right next to each other. How sad.

Carolina Beach, a couple of days ago. Note stairways over the dunes.

This is from our rest day a couple of days ago on the beach. The dune protection we’ve seen since Florida continues here: Walking on or disturbing the dunes is forbidden and carries something like a $500 fine. So there are hundreds and hundreds of these stairs and walkways to get over the dunes. Nearly every house has one. Some of them are only a few feet apart. I can’t imagine why they need quite that many, and it seems to me like that might defeat some of the purpose of the dune protection….??? I mean, it doesn’t seem like the dune plants they’re trying to encourage would grow very well under the stairs and walkways.