Day 91

Knoxville
I slept in. I was only vaguely aware of people getting up and getting ready to leave for class. I finally got up around 9. Unfortunately I must have bumped my charger wrong- one of my big batteries was not charged much. Dang. I had three weeks left and with everything charged, I can last three weeks. Either I will be careful with it or I will have to stop at another warm showers place. I took a while to get ready so that it would charge a bit more. I reseated my front tube. It's been giving me troubles, just like the last one did before it popped. Nothing seemed unusual once I deflated it and looked. Hopefully that will fix it. I was finally all packed up and ready to go around 11. One of the first places I passed by was a tourist spot. Hooray, they had Knoxville Tennessee postcards. A few streets down, I passed by a mailbox. That was easy. Going through town wasn't bad either. The roads either had a speed limit slow enough that I could ride in them safely or there was a big bike lane. Until I got to one section where the shoulders disappeared and it was frightening to ride. It wasn't far though. Now I had two choices- continue on a busy road that had great big shoulders for many miles, or turn off and take the backroads. I took the backroads. More turns, but I knew it went through a town. I needed food eventually. The rest of Tennessee seemed pretty rural, so I didn't know when I'd get another chance. There were some nice rolling hills before I got to a gas station. I didn't really need a break, but I got icecream with my usual food supplies. Rocky road. I try to get something different every time. Soon I was back on the road. The riding wasn't bad. The backroads were not busy at all. The hills sucked, but the views made it all worth it. All the streams that I went along were beautiful. The tree packed hills were just starting to change color. I passed by a big factory and then was biking along a huge river. It was great. I passed by lots of farmhouses with huge mowed lawns- that had to have taken forever! Finally the sun stopped peeking out from the crests of the mountain and I needed to find camp. There were so many houses here that it was hard to do, but I finally found a spot in the woods at the top of a hill. It sucks to have to pedal up a hill first thing in the morning. I had to get rid of some spiderwebs in the way. I hate doing that, because it's destructive. But it would have been impossible to find a way in that didn't have a spiderweb in front of it without spending all night. The road seemed to get busier as I set up my tent. It was on a slope, and there were rocks that I discovered when I climbed in. It was a far cry from the amazingly comfortable air mattress from the night before, but I always find a way to sleep. The forest around me was noisy. It sounded like branches kept falling. I looked up bears and sure enough, I was in the middle of bear country. I stayed up for a while, but I quickly realized that if there were bears around me, they would have eaten me by now. I relaxed enough to sleep.