Goodbye Mississippi, hello Alabama

Monday April 24th. Day 49 Gautier to Gulf Shores. 88 miles or 143 km.

I woke early this morning as last night David, the Israeli friend, called me and offered to ride together today. They were 23 km ahead of me so I needed to catch up with them. It was a cool morning, only 11 degrees Celcius and cloudy. The wind was strong and most likely again a headwind. I was just on the road when I encountered the first bridge of the day. Fortunately it had a wide shoulder protecting me from the morning rush hour traffic. 

At 8.30 am I met the 3 friends across from Walmart and we set off. They wanted to bike to Golf Shores a fair distance so a long day for me. The first part of the route was through a sort of forest which sheltered us from the worst of the wind. It felt so good to not have to look at my map every 5 minutes and to not being alone! My stomach began to feel slightly better. It has had butterflies for some time.

Soon we came upon the welcome sign of Alabama and upon the 3 cyclists I had met yesterday. They took pictures of us and we did the same for them.

They are fast cyclists as we didn't see them again. We took an early lunchbreak before we began cycling across a 33 meter high bridge of about 3 km long. The wind was fierce at the top and it took all my strength not to fall over. Even the down hill was tough but we made it.

Around 1 o'clock we reached the ferry which would bring us to the other side. It would take about 30 minutes to cross but the bay was very rough with huge eaves and white caps. Long enough for me as my stomach didn't appreciate all this churning. Later we heard that the ferry stopped sailing for the day. The water was too rough making it unsafe to sail..

We continued cycling beside more water. It's a beautiful area with many boats. 

We decided to have a motel for the night as I didn't have a shower for a few days. And shared between 4 people the price is cheap. We picked up a sandwich at Subway and some groceries and off we went to the Beachside Resort Hotel. Enough space for 4 bikes, all our gear and me sleeping between the beds. Not bad at all.