Feelin' the pain in Ft. Payne

The other day we crossed another state border. The states are flying by! We went from Rome, GA to Scottsboro, AL. The weather was beautiful and this day was the hardest and the best day at the same time. In the morning, I rode by myself because the weather was so perfect and I wanted to enjoy the rural scenery at my own pace. I stopped often to take pictures of the Georgia countryside. But I made sure to keep close to a few other riders so I could have someone to take pictures of me at the state line. There was a large group of us that stopped at the Alabama sign. We had enough to try to spell out ALABAMA, but the idea was better than the picture because most cannot tell what we are spelling out. After we were done taking pictures, I continued on with a few of the girls. Shortly after the state line, we hit our first mountain climb! The road was a gradual climb for about a mile and a half. It felt like forever! I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. Once we made it to the top, lunch was waiting for us. I had worked up quite an appetite and the lunch felt well deserved. one of our leaders told us about a waterfall not too far away. Most of us decided to take the detour to the falls. The falls weren't huge, but the. Swim in the water was well worth the hike. We even jumped off a few rocks! I started on a small jump that was about 7 feet. Some of the guys were having fun jumping off the bigger jumps. I was a little scared to do that, but my friend Kelsey convinced me to jump off the 30 ft cliff. I have never done anything like that before, but I'm glad I did it! After about an hour of playing around at the waterfalls, we headed back on the road. We expected to go downhill, but we kept going up! Once we finally started on the descent, it was lots of fun! There were curves to make it challenging and fun. Later on, we went on lots of back roads that didn't even have names, just numbers. Towards the end of the day, we went up another climb. I rode with a group of 5, but Mike and I wanted to go a little faster, so we left the group. We went on some really rough backroads
, which is why we decided to stop at a gas station to rest with about 15 miles left. The people there were nice, but very concerned about our safety. The next downhill was a gradual 13% grade hill! As we went down it, I hit 46 mph (which I think was speeding on that road...) the end of the downhill opened up to a lake. Mike and I stopped to take some cool pictures before we went the rest of the way. Once we started towards the church, the fast group passed us. They pulled us all the way in. For dinner, we had some great homemade BBQ. Some people are getting sick of +BBQ, bjut I'm loving it! And tons of sweet tea too.

Well I know I'm a few days behind, but I'm really tired after a ten hr build day in the 90 degree heat and 65% humidity. Should get off to bed now. Will try to catch up tomorrow and shoot to do short daily blogs.