Greg & Camille Go Bike

We slept in a bit, but probably not enough to justify the late arrival last night (almost 1 am). We spent time in the morning doing bike maintenance, primarily installing new bike chains. After squaring away the bikes, we loaded up the car and drove into Charleston.

We gave ourselves a self-imposed 2:30 pm deadline for the car drop off only leaving a couple hours to explore Charleston. We started out by visiting the the Postal Museum which was perfectly sized for a quick visit. Next, we walked a few blocks away to the Charleston Market. It looked cute from the outside, but once inside it felt more like any shopping mall, just in a non-standard form factor. Most of the stalls were clearly targeted at tourists. Leaving the market, we stopped for some expensive, but tasty pizza and walked by the historic Rainbow Row heading back to the car.

At the car rental drop off, we briefly caught up with employee who'd helped us before the holidays. We chatted for a bit and he asked a bit more about the trip. We were glad to catch up with him. It was nice to bring some closure to that story.

We were not given an easy transition back to the trip. After a short stretch on trail, we were pretty quickly we were back on US 17 for ~10 miles, surrounded by heavy traffic and often with a narrow or non-existent shoulder. Even after turning onto a smaller 2 lane highway, the experience was still pretty bike unfriendly, now with no shoulder but still heavy traffic.

Finally, we turned off the highway onto a low traffic dirt road, initially optimistic that the ride would improve, but the further we traveled on this road the less stable the surface became. We stubbornly kept riding (and falling) but eventually hopped off the bikes and walked/jogged while pulling the bikes alongside us. It took us half an hour to move the bikes 1 mile before the road finally became more firmly packed.

After this setback, we were no longer on pace to reach our Air B&B before dark. Especially with how unfriendly the roads had been that left us feeling a bit anxious. Thankfully the traffic and the road surface both seemed to improve from here and with a bit of a sprint, we ended up safely arriving just after sunset but still with plenty of light.

Our Air B&B host Wallace let us into the house through there garage. There place seemed really interesting with a lot of chickens, ducks and other wildlife scurrying around the backyard and a giant tree house under construction that's apparently going to be their next Air B&B. We went up to our private space on the third floor and ate, relaxed and turned in for the night.