T his morning was clear and cooler than it's been lately, so I hoped that would continue throughout the day. But once the sun came up it got oppressively hot very fast. Humid, sticky kind of hot and not many clouds. There was much more gravel today and almost all of it was pretty loose. It reminded me of what I call peanut rock. In my hometown of Rochelle the shelling plant spits out what rocks are left with the peanuts after they're initially cleaned and stored. They accumulate and the town uses them to spread out on the alleys. It's a lot of smooth, peanut sized rocks that are reddish. The natural rock around here looks very similar with some bigger rocks as well. It makes for some pretty slow riding. A lot of the roads are quite exposed here too, because of all the kudzu. It's so much worse than Georgia. It will go on for miles at a time on the roadsides. I got off route a bit but rather than backtrack I took a couple of alternate roads to save on extra miles. Once I rejoined the route I entered the gnarliest no maintenance road of the trip, by far. It reminded me a lot of the blown out and eroded roads in the north part of southwest Georgia. Think Providence Canyon. Soil here is similar and this road was almost completely washed away in places. There were several dirt bike tracks and at least one 4x4 truck or Jeep that made it through. But it must have been difficult because it was hard on a bike. I actually had fun here because it broke up the monotony of the loose gravel. Had a few more aggressive dogs today, not as many as yesterday, because I didn't pass as many houses. I stopped several times in the middle of the day to cool off and get water and try to get out of the heat. Definitely the hottest day so far. I had marked this cemetery where I'm camping tonight on my route and it's not the best but there's not much other options relatively close by, and it's not perfect but it'll do. It has some good shade.