The devastation caused by Matthew still hits you at every turn. We have stopped remarking on downed trees. Only the most spectacular now deserves mention. I would bet that we have ridden past well over 1,000 downed trees, and remember that these are the ones still left after over a month's worth of cleanup.
Lumberton today.
Lumberton, five of seven large trees gone on N Elm St.
We also continue to see many 'road closed' signs. Again, we had one on our route today. This time, we did not luck out.
There are other signs of the losses folks have suffered. There are piles of mattresses on the side of the road, as well as furniture and broken pieces of 'stuff.' All these are things that were soaked by flood waters, and must be discarded. You also see fences that are choked with grasses and brush that the flood waters pushed against and through them. Some fences couldn't take the pressure, and were pushed down flat. Many buildings have blue plastic tarps covering their damaged roofs. And I keep reminding myself that they have had five weeks to clean up the mess. How much worse was it on day one?
These are some tough people.
On a more mundane note, in my last post, I pictured a field that I speculated might be harvested cotton. We passed one today that appears to be awaiting harvest.
The white fluffs felt just like cotton balls, but they had little lumps (seeds) in them, and were surrounded by some pretty stiff husks. Harvesting cotton must have been pretty tough on the hands before mechanization.
We crossed into South Carolina today, the fourteenth state we have ridden in on our trip.
Yes, the bike made it too.
Tomorrow is a rest day, laundry, veg out, the standard things. A few days ago, 11/19 was supposed to have heavy rains, and we thought we had timed this perfectly. Now the threat of rain has gone away, so our rest day should be sunny and in the low 70's. Not so bad.
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