73 miles, 1320 feet of climbing
Another sunny day, with humidity but feeling less so than yesterday. We stopped for lunch at a cafe in Elizabethtown. It appears to concentrate on breakfast dishes for the morning and afternoon and closes up at 2 pm. I had a grilled chicken salad and Dan, John, and Mark chose grilled cheese from the kid’s menu.
Downtown Elizabethtown:
With the same crops and terrain, it is hard not to repeat.
The Black River-
Another pasture-
The Whiteville Courthouse, surrounded by a roundabout-
A local controversy appears to involve the hog farms. We saw several commercial chicken, turkey, and hog operations and many trucks hauling chickens (visible in tightly stacked cages) and pigs (the smell) to the processing plants. I’m guessing that some people don’t like to live near hogs due to the smell and maybe flies. If someone dropped a hog farm in near my house, I’d be one of them. But in some cases the hogs were no doubt there first. I don’t have much sympathy for people who, as we say in the land use law biz, “move to the nuisance.”
Any way, here’s the more witty of the two lawn signs we say most of the day-
More info at ncfarmfamilies.com
Today’s Quality Inn was looking up from the sketchy first sample and the somewhat better second sample earlier in the tour until, while I was in the shower, someone was banging on the door, two separate times. I eventually found out that it was a carpet cleaning crew wanting to steam-clean my carpet. Another rider found out about this amenity when his nap was disturbed. He had to vacate his room for two hours. All this in the afternoon; why not schedule it for the morning, before check in?