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Wednesday, November 28, 2001 - Mobile Bay, It's Bigger than You Think
65 miles. Vancleave, MS to Woody Motel, Spanish Fort, AL
We got up at 4:45 to a clear, warm morning. We were
expecting the usual fog to start rolling in, but were pleasantly surprised to
find that it didn't. The temp was in the upper 60s when we left, and reached the
upper 70s. It is very humid. They are calling for a cold front to come thru,
which means highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 40s, with no rain. Sounds
good to us.
We left Vancleave and headed towards Wade and Hurley
(pop. 700). The roads were good and very scenic. One area took us thru an
excellent cypress swamp and bottomland hardwoods. This was the Pascagoula
Wildlife management Area. These will probably be our last very rural roads for a
while. 10 miles past Hurley we crossed into Alabama, our penultimate state. We
then headed for Mobile (pop. 196,278).
The route did a very good job getting thru the city. It
took us past some newer neighborhoods on the edge of town, then some older,
pretty ones with very large live oaks, festooned with Spanish moss, creating a
canopy across the street. We were surprised at the number of small hills in
Mobile.
There are two tunnels, I-10 and U.S. 90, that cross the
Mobile River, cyclists are not allowed in them, so we had to take a big swing
north to cross the river over the Cochrane Bridge, quite an impressive,
futuristic looking bridge.
On our approach to the bridge we came to an overpass of
the Mobile rail yard that was closed to all traffic. We just went around the
barriers and were on our way. You can often do that with a bike. Luckily the
traffic wasn't bad because it was all on the interstate where one of the tunnels
is.
We road on to another fine motel, near the USS Alabama
Memorial Park. There isn't much right here because we are on top of the Mobile
Bay and the road crosses mostly water and a few small islands, we are on one of
the small islands. There is a nice seafood restaurant across from us, which
saved us from having to bike all over in the wind to find food. The weather forecast
is for the front to move thru tomorrow with lots of rain. We are going to spend
the day visiting the battleship Alabama rather than biking in the rain.
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