A typical scene for much of our ride today which included riding through the Francis Marion National Forest. For those history buffs Francis was known as the swamp fox and he fought against the British during the Revolutionary War.

Today was a long and interesting day. We rode north, then west, and finally south to essentially ride around Charleston to rejoin the Adventure Cycling Atlantic Coast route. At 71 miles Andy and Hal stopped for dinner in Ridgeville, SC and Larry rode ahead another nine miles to the campground since he was going to cook dinner at the campground. He wanted to setup camp before the rain came. The plan was for us to meet him at the campground. However, Larry called us from the campground to tell us it was full. Larry decided to stealth camp by putting his tent in the woods in an inconspicuous spot. We decided to find a motel. The closest one was 12 miles away back in the direction we had ridden earlier in the day. We had a fun 12 mile night ride to a motel in Summerville, SC. Total mileage for the day was 83 miles (for Larry about 79 miles). We will meet Larry tomorrow during the day or at a campground at the end of the day.

We have continued to have very good luck with regard to the weather. The weather report called for a chance of scattered showers today. In the late afternoon very dark clouds appeared overhead and we saw some lightning. However, it only lightly rained on us for about 2 minutes. Some hard rain fell while we ate dinner but it ended before we finished dinner.