Day 48 Cross Country Bike Trip
Tobey and I parted ways today. It was a bit like the Tale of Two Cities … “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and Tobey got the best!
He was up and on the road by 8:30 heading south on Hwy 188 to catch the 11:00 am ferry across Mobile Bay from Dauphin Island. 
Tobey had to ride over this bridge on his way to the ferry landing. When he got to the bridge, one lane was closed for construction. They had a flagman allowing one way traffic while stopping the other direction. No work was being done today, so he was able to ride in the closed lane with no traffic. He made the 24 mile ride in plenty of time to get to the ferry.
He said when he got to the ferry they wanted to know if he needed one-way or roundtrip. He only needed one-way, which was a good thing. They were concerned about fog coming in and not being able to provide space if he needed roundtrip! Onto the ferry he went for the 30 minute trip across Mobile Bay.
He saw six or eight oil platforms in the bay during his crossing.
The ferry can only accommodate vehicles 21’ or smaller, so I had to drive around Mobile and the bay. My route took me north to I-10 and on the bridge over Mobile Bay. FOG. Yep, more fog for me going across the 7.5 mile long bridge!
Once I rounded the top of the bridge I circled the outside of Mobile before turning south and west toward Fort Morgan to meet Tobey. My route took 3 hours to go 100 miles! Tobey was off the ferry and rode 7 miles to meet me for lunch before I got there!
This was our view of the bay from the pullout where we had lunch. After lunch, we parted ways again. I continued west to the Fort Morgan historic site while Tobey headed east on Hwy. 180.
The site has a small museum depicting some of the history of the fort. During the War of 1812, the U.S. government demanded a new fortification be built on Mobile Point. The original fort featured a fan shape to allow a large number of artillery pieces to sweep the channel. The fort defended against two British invasions. After the War of 1812, American forces wanted a stronger fortification. Construction of the fort began in 1819 and it took 15 years to complete because of its isolated location. 
In 1861, during the Civil War, the Alabama State Militia seized Fort Morgan from the U.S. Government. It remained in Southern hands until August 1864 when the Confederate fleet was defeated and the Confederate garrison was forced to surrender to the North. The fort has been used off and on through the Spanish American War, WWI, during the Depression as a WPA worker site, and again during WWII. In 1947 following WWII, the fort was well over 100 years old The US War Department deeded Fort Morgan Military Reservation to the State of Alabama for use as a historic park.
I followed behind Tobey over 2 hours later after touring the fort. There were so many homes along the shore – some large, some small, all seem to be on stilts.
After going through the town of Gulf Shores there were some places to stop and see the beaches. We both stopped a few times to take pictures along the way. The further east we went, the larger the resorts became.
It warmed up quite a bit and there were people out on the beach enjoying the weather.
I finally caught up to Tobey late this afternoon, but he beat me to Florida! It’s crazy – we entered Alabama late yesterday afternoon and left this afternoon! 
Tobey rode in about 4:30 pm to the Galvez Boat Ramp on the west edge of Pensacola, Florida. We are now back together again!!
We were treated to a beautiful sunset before walking over to Hub Stacey’s at the Point for dinner. Tobey had the Reuben sandwich and I had a fried chicken dinner. Both were good and filling. The bonus, they had live music!
Today’s ride was 69.5 miles. The link to the ride is https://ridewithgps.com/trips/31766967.
This is a link that will show all of Tobey’s route so far. https://ridewithgps.com/events/71165-tobey-s-coast-to-coast-ride-2018-2019
On the left side of the map, it shows day by day stop and start points so you can look at each day’s route.
OR you can scroll to the bottom of the day-to-day and there is a box that says “Show all on Map”. If you click that, it will change the map view to show all days traveled so far (but be prepared for a short pause as takes a while for the file to load).
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