It was a very cold morning, indeed. We both struggled a bit to get up, but we knew had to get on the road. We packed up as quickly as we could since it was so cold and then got ready to head the little bit back into town to get milk. Just as we were leaving the church, a car pulled in and we had a chance to talk to one of the parishioners/ or pastor, I'm not sure which. When he saw us with the bikes, he figured out pretty quick that we had slept outside back there. He didn't have a problem with it and wished us good fortune on our travels. Once we got our milk, we looked around for a warm place to eat breakfast inside. After a bit of searching without any luck, we ended up going to post office. We took our bowls and spoons, cereal and milk, and went and sat on the floor in lobby. It must have been pretty funny for people to see that came in to get their mail. No one bothered us though or seemed to have a problem- I guess they understood that it was cold out and that's why we were in there. Crazy little memories of strange things that we have done while on this trip, but that kind of stuff all comes with it. After we ate, I rinsed out our bowls as fast as I could in hopes of not freezing my fingers off, and then we were on the road again. After only going a couple miles down the road, we had to stop and add some more layers- face masks and thicker gloves, it was just that cold already. Chills right to the bone.We had quite a few enjoyable roads to ride on today. Some had a pretty small shoulder, but the traffic wasn't going that fast so it was nice. The wind, yet again, didn't seem to help us at all. It just made us colder and slowed us down. We made it to a little town and since I was already getting really hungry and "feeling a little shaky" as I get when I haven't eaten, we had a quick granola bar break in a parking lot before continuing on. The hills at first today, were big rolling hills. After the town of Douglasville, where we stopped for our snack, the hills were still big an rolling, just much steeper. We crossed over into another of the hundreds of counties we've been to- Paulding County, which is the home of Country Music Star Travis Tritt. After making it to the town of Hiram, where we planned to stop for lunch, we at first got a little worried. The tiny little old downtown section didn't have any restaurants, or stores. We were really hoping for someplace we could eat indoors, just to get out of the cold. That is one thing about this last leg of the trip- with the cold weather, our food bill will definitely go up, but there is no sense in freezing our tooshies off either. After a couple more hills, we went from being surrounded by trees to a major highway and every store you could possibly want. We found ourselves a Subway restaurant and went there for lunch. We made a quick stop at Wal-mart to get some food for dinner since we weren't sure how far we would make it and if there would be a grocery store in the place that we stopped. Not too long into our afternoon ride, snowflakes began coming down. They were small and nothing was sticking to the ground, so it wasn't a big deal. I do prefer snow though, if it is this kind- because even though it's cold- we don't get soaked like when it rains. The hills continued after lunch; up and down rollers and then a pretty long climb right before getting into Cartersville, the town we had hoped to make it to today. We were definitely getting into the foothills of the Appalachians now. When we rolled into town, we saw our favorite place, McDonald's and took a little break to check the internet figure out where things were in town. Although there were a few churches in town, we had a hard time finding a church tonight. We looked all over for a church with a car and for a church that would actually be suitable to set up at but didn't have much luck, until we went to the Bilingual Methodist church. we saw a few lights on and a car outside. We knocked on the door and a funny thing happened. At first, we didn't hear anyone, but then just as we were about to walk away, we heard someone knocking back. We said hello through the door and eventually found out that the guy inside was the cleaning guy. He was nice enough to give us the pastor's number. We gave her a call and didn't get an answer at first. Then a little while later, as we were still riding around looking for a place to park for the night, she called us back! Her name was Angela, and she said we were fine to camp there at the church under the pavilion by the fire pit! She also invited us to breakfast/ church in morning. It was a perfect spot, especially since we were expecting some more snow tonight. For dinner Joey and I had our favorite meal, but this time a family size bag that we had to cook in two rounds because our pan was too small. Since it was so cold out, we cooked right in tent. It's not the best thing to do, but it sure did get us warmed up a bit! There was a really nice bathroom for a change, at the gas station across the street. That was a life saver, because I found out that my turtle kneck was damp from the downpouring rain we had a few days ago. The water proof bags do a pretty good job of keeping everything dry, but anything in the very bottom of the bag usually gets a tad bit damp from the condensation. I was able to get my shirt nice and dried out, and warm, using the hand dryer. I typed for a while, again, completely inside my sleeping bag. That never seems to work very well, because after being cold, once I finally get warm, I just fall asleep-right in the middle of typing. I woke up at 2am this morning, with the tablet still in my lap. As I was putting it away to officially go to sleep, I heard things hitting the walls of the tent. It was snowing like crazy again. We're in for a wild ride for the rest of the trip-after all, we're not even out of GA yet!!! Our miles totaled 58.75 today.
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