An Unbalanced Balance: Dauphin to Big Lagoon State Park to Crestview

We arrived in Alabama and stayed one night. Nice hotel motel in Dauphin, AL. Dinner was a Reds shrimp boil with 🥔 and 🌽, good but not enough to cover the miles so I added a subway sandwich on the way back to the motel. It’s off season in Dauphin so not much was open. We headed out early (7am) and picked up breakfast at a gas station (only thing open), good coffee and yogurt, not much else. We then headed to the ferry and took the 8am across the Mobile Bay $6 for pedestrians and the bike was free. The ride was smooth and had good views, lots of birds and oil rigs. On shore we rode along the coast and at the Florida-Alabama boarder stopped at Flor-Bama, a bar/grill on the boarder. We then did the required photo at the Welcome to Florida sign. We then looked at the map and found Big Lagoon State Park was a good stopping place but lacked a restaurant. I stopped at a grocery and picked up dinner (2 Bagels, 1/2lb turkey slices, carrots and a slice of cake) and breakfast. Both were enough but nothing extra. The park was nice with good sites and clean bathrooms. It was dark before 6pm and the bugs were out, I was in my tent catching up on email, listening to a book and asleep by 8:30. Dew in the morning slowed our start a bit.

We did a longer ride today (77miles) because they are predicting rain tomorrow. The ride was mostly uneventful, but whoever designed FL-90 as a “Bike route” must not ride a bike. At times the bike lane was12 inches wide and at one point ended in the middle of a bridge. Thankfully today the drivers were good! Sunset was 4:50 so we need to plan on being done by 2:30 so we have some buffer for emergencies (flats etc…)

Today we crossed 2600 miles with about 430 miles remaining.

Loading the bikes on the ferry

The ferry docks