RTTMS June 5, 2011....Hot, Hot, HOT!!!

Just to get it out of the way, it has been HOT today!!!

Now that I have that out of the way, here is the ride report for today.

John was late in getting back to Tally last night and we made the decision to delay our departure to The Land of the Midnight Sun until noon today.

This extra time allowed both of us to complete some last minute tasks before leaving. The delay also shortened our ride for the day and we got to start in the heat of the day....yuck.

We met at Hardees for a quick snack and hit the road at about 12:30 pm. The sky we bright and the air was hot and getting hotter.

We fueled up in Bainbridge, Georgia and took highway 84 west to Dothan,AL. We then headed north on highway 231 to Montgomery, Al., and the took I-65 north through Birmingham to our stop for the evening at Cullman, AL. We had hoped to make it a little further north but it seemed the the traffic gods were not on our side today. Nothing disastrous for us but a couple of long slowdowns and one traffic stopping accident just south of Cullman.

Did I mention that it was HOT. We saw it climb to the high 90s and finally cracked 100 just south of Montgomery and topped out at 104 degrees. The temperature stayed that way for most of the ride to Birmingham. Just north of Birmingham, the temps dropped to a cool 89 degrees. We never thought that 89 would seem cool but it was today.

Just north of Montgomery, we stopped to cool off and get some cool refreshment with a stop at Bass Pro Shop in Prattville, Al. It was really nice and cool inside and so we took a few extra minutes (30 to 45) to do some looking in case we found something we needed.. I bought some camping silverware and John bought a shirt. We used our time productively in the wonderful air conditioning.

We traveled about 338 miles today and I have a trip total of about 1638 miles since leaving Tally on last Thursday. Racking up the miles!!!

Pictures for today.

John and I ready to leave Tally.

John leading us into Georgia.
Crossing into Alabama.
Hot and Hazy in Birmingham, Alabama.
That is about it for today. We are both a little tired and looking to get an earlier start tomorrow and getting further toward our Alaska goal>

Off the air for now.

Mike