Sweet Home, Alabama (USA Day 157)

After Freda, Ike and Tina make you pancakes that good, you know the day can only go downhill. The only road east was Highway 90: a misery of a road made only worse by the muggy, damp air and featureless surroundings. We passed into Alabama, the only difference being a significant uptick in road smoothness and considerably more Baptist churches per square mile, if such a thing were possible.

Today was miserable. The rain came and went with furious regularity, and Raincoat Hokey-Cokey rules were imposed over a dozen joyless rounds. The second it stopped raining, it was too hot for a single extra layer. As soon as it started again, we’d be sodden within a minute. Amy made the sorts of roaring growls that would scare off the chasiest of dogs.

The churches and houses (but mainly churches) beside the road melted into swamp and bayou: long grasses, vines and mangrove trees matted together on each side, feeding off the murky channels of road runoff that flanked the tarmac. A racoon ran across our path, then swum away across the flooded grass, not in that much of a hurry. We passed a tiny turtle trying his luck on the bike lane, and an armadillo who’d not been so fortunate. Egrets and herons joined us for a stint before settling by a drizzly corner to watch for fish. The swamp, for all its restrictions and limitations, was rising to meet us.

We stopped in Bayou La Batre for some lunch at Captain Frank’s BBQ, a tiny wooden hut filled with smoke and noise. Frank used to catch the best oysters in town, said a customer. Then fourteen years ago he gave it all up to start a BBQ joint. “We all though he was mad,” the guy said, through a mouthful of brisket. “But now he makes the best barbecue in town. Strikes me he’s just special,” said the customer. To be fair, the gumbo was delicious, the pulled pork moist and smoky. We left for more rain riding very happy indeed.

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Alright, so today wasn’t so miserable. It felt awful at the time. Amy hated it, vocally, throughout, but somehow, between the start of the gigantic causeway and bridge to get to Dauphin Island and the end, we’d both turned. It had been pretty fascinating.

Pelicans glid below us as we crossed the grey bay, elevated by the bridge and somehow clear of the wind for once. Dauphin Island lay ahead, flat as the rest of the state, half-submerged by a week of rain. The houses are uniformly built on the second floor: the ground level a network of struts and fences and garden furniture. The floods come too often. This island was not supposed to be lived upon.

Our hosts had bible class and we had drooping eyes. With the World Series on the telly and spaghetti in our belly, we fell asleep far earlier than planned.