Frostie Root Beer Returns
As you can probably gather from the title of this post, not a whole lot went on on Thursday’s 51 mile day.
It started off with trying to eat breakfast at the motel and catch up on the hurricane about to hit Florida. However, the desk clerk wanted to have a one way nonstop conversation about politics, his kids, his second job, lack of sleep, working on his friend’s truck… Nice guy, but you wonder how these kinds of talkers can go on and on like that.
It was good to get out of the traffic of Carbondale and return to the quiet roads of the countryside. It’s hard to notice from the photo above, but the hills haven’t gone away and after looking at the remaining maps they won’t be going away until a few days before the end of the trip. It took a lot of effort to get through parts of Thursday’s ride.
I was going to be staying the night at the Bay Creek Campground in Robbs, which is on the map but doesn’t have any stores. So I stopped at the Goreville Food Market about 20 miles before it to get something for the evening. It’s a true small town grocery store.
Inside one of the coolers they had bottles of Frostie root beer. I hadn’t seen these in over thirty years and thought they didn’t make them any longer. So I got one and sat on the bench out front near the fall display of pumpkins, taking a break and drinking it before moving on.
After some more long hills and some very steep climbing the final mile, I arrived at the Bay Creek Campground. As I approached the office, I heard a woman shouting in the distance, “What do you need?!” I thought she couldn’t possibly be talking to me. But she was and when I looked over at her she repeated it again. Strange greeting, but when I told her I had called earlier about staying there she walked up, couldn’t have been nicer and took me on a ride on a golf cart around the facilities. The place is very relaxed with horses all around.
It was a tiring day and with nothing going on here it was in the tent and asleep by 8:00, getting a good night’s rest for the ride into Kentucky on Friday.