April 25, 2015
Wilmington to Jacksonville
OK, so it finally rained on us. 27 riding days with no rain; today, the 28th, it rained most of the day. It started around 10:00 AM and was intermittent till it cleared by 2:00 PM.
Outside of that, today was really nothing too special. The mornings have continued to be cool, and I expect this will continue for some time. It was also overcast, so I donned my rain jacket for warmth and in anticipation of rain. But no leg warmers.
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We departed from Wilmington almost due east (Wilmington is on a grid but tilted a bit from a north-south axis). It's pleasant enough, but I had been told it was a well-preserved city of Civil War vintage. That was not apparent, and the ride into town on Front Street had more impressive homes than those I mostly saw riding east. And downtown seemed to have a lot of vacant space and some older structures, but nothing overly impressive.
Still, it was a nice ride, and we followed Bicycle Route 3 most of the way out of town, north and around the airport and down to US-17. This route had low traffic volumes and nice scenery. We also saw lots of other cyclists, so this is a popular route for the locals.
Then we came upon US-17 and took a coffee break. Rain was falling hard now, and this section was all curb and gutter with no shoulders. Actually, the break gave the rain a chance to subside a bit, but it was still coming down 30 minutes later. So we pushed off and took the quarter-point in the right-hand lane.
The curb and gutter section lasted for the length of Hampstead, about three miles. Then things improved as we had a full shoulder, sans rumble strips, for the next ten miles, all the way to Holly Ridge, where it returned to curb and gutter and we were back in the right lane. It rained fairly well for this entire stretch.
We then turned onto NC-50 and a much quieter road. This adjoins parts of Camp Lejeune and is the only place we took pictures since we needed something to post here!
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Being adjacent to a military camp means trees and more trees. We finally turned right towards Jacksonville and took more interesting roads to NC-53 and that into Jacksonville.
By now it had started to clear, and I had doffed the jacket. We cruised into Jacksonville and made a detour into the business end of town (i.e., downtown). This town leaves a lot to be desired. But tomorrow we head for the Outer Banks! And the weather is predicted to improve!
Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 1,415 miles (2,277 km)
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