Day 4

July 25, 2020

Mile 38.0, Payne Gap to Shallowford Bridge

Resupply day…Ralph met me at the Iron Bridge Cafe with the van, baggies full of rice & beans and running water.

I met two cyclists who told me I could take a shortcut and go jump in the river. I’d heard the hootin’ and hollerin’, presumably from people jumping in the river, but I wasn’t fully prepared to come out of the woods and into the circus that surrounded said hollerin’.

It’s High Tubin’ Time in the south, y’all, and the brownish Tecoah River was choked with a second river of pink inner tubes and naked recreationers clacking red Solo cups all the way downstream to the bridge. I wasn’t prepared. Nothing could have prepared me or anyone.

But we found a quiet turn-out by the river, big enough for one van—ours—and we picnicked and waved to the parade of people floating by until the parade stopped at precisely 5pm.

After the hooters went home, the locals came out in their own boats and tubes and one couple kayaked down the river followed by a big black lab in a PFD swimming along behind.