Day 20, July 23-Hubbard Landing Campground to Mobile, AL

64.10 miles. N 30.41 W 88.03 Elevation:42 feet

Good-by to the great little cabin at Hubbard and hello to the hustle and bustle of the city of Mobile. We breakfasted at the Stagecoach Restaurant in Stockton and then headed toward Spanish Fort. The hills and forests were much the same as we have been biking through for the past 4 or 5 days. All that changed dramatically when we hit Spanish Fort, AL. Suddenly we were on a 4-lane highway with lots of traffic. Gone were the pine forests…and we were surrounded by water everywhere. Rivers coming into the Gulf of Mexico on our right and the bay on our left. Our route into Mobile followed a truck route which was heavily traveled. Luckily we had a good sized shoulder on which to ride. 2 tunnels take most traffic into Mobile, but since bicycles are not allowed in the tunnel we had to take a circuitous route to a large bridge over the Mobile River to the north of the city. Unfortunately, this also took us through the Mobile Docks which wasn’t such comfortable biking. We finally worked our way through that and into the downtown area of Mobile. There were found the Ramada Inn where we planned to spend the night. The next problem was that we needed to get to a bicycle shop. We have pretty much worn out our bicycling shorts and Spokewrench’s back tire is all but bald. We called 3 but all were out of the city quite some distance. The Cadence 120 Bike Shop owner thought he was only about 4 miles from downtown. I called about a cab but it was $18 one way…so we decided to bike there. It didn’t look too difficult to find, so we took off our trailers and headed out. 8 miles later we found the shop. That means a 16 mile round trip ride. But we did get the tire, shorts, and Big Mac at McDonalds.

Question of the day: As we biked into Mobile, we came across the battleship pictured above. It is memorial to the Veterans of WWII. What is the name of the battleship?