I was asleep as soon as the sun went down last night, it's amazing how fast it comes when you're exhausted. I managed to get going a little after the sun had poked up above the trees, after filtering a liter of water from the pond. I was down to only a half liter after rolling up to camp with three. I still felt a little dehydrated as well so I decided I needed to stay on top of it. My first dirt road of the day was mostly sand, and hilly, as this is the sand hills part of the state that runs in a band a few miles wide around the fall line. The forest here is stunted and composed of longleaf pine, turkey oak and wiregrass and little else. I had to walk a few times here but I made it through to the next highway and a town called Oakland. The Dollar General there would be opening in a few minutes but I decided I didn't need anything so I continued on. After a short couple of dirt streets, I was back on pavement. It's actually hard to stick to dirt only in the sandhills, because it's difficult travel for cars and trucks as well, so a lot of the roads that actually go anywhere have been paved. In addition I was riding just outside the eastern boundary of the enormous Fort Benning property, which limits road selection as well. So it was pretty fast for the first few miles till I got to Box Springs, and Talbot county. This is where the really great gravel roads started. I was now back in the piedmont, and the hills continued. I had a lot of fun here, as always in Talbot county, such great riding. Not far into Talbot I took a slight diversion out to an abandoned church and cemetery. Even from the satellite photo it looked trashed and indeed it was. Very sad but the locals had been using the property for their dumping grounds and four wheeler fun for years. The church was still standing but was completely open, all the doors and windows were long gone. I walked cautiously up the wooden ramp inside and found not really that much trash other than glass everywhere inside, and surprisingly little graffiti. Amongst the glass scattered about were those little cardboard personal fanning devices that funeral homes give out. I found a small pamphlet laying where the pulpit would be, and picked it up. It was a record of the 114th annual meeting of the Salem Primitive Baptist Church Association, held at the very church I was standing in, as recent a time as 2006! I was blown away at how destroyed everything was after only 16 years. Crazy. I suppose a small victory is it hadn't been burned to the ground yet. I wandered around the cemetery a bit which was also very overgrown and ended up after much fumbling around, finding a photo request from Find a grave. This done I returned and headed back north. The following roads were so terrific they might be the highlight of the trip, although I really enjoyed the ones in Chattahoochee county from yesterday. But it was truly excellent riding, very hilly and curvy, mostly shaded as well, with basically zero houses anywhere and no highway riding. I was in heaven. Somewhere around here I stopped at a lovely creek that was flowing over shoals in the form of a huge rock, and took the opportunity to filter more water. I climbed up Oak mountain through a small subdivision, partially on gravel even. The steep part of the climb that I picked(there are many roads here to choose from) had an identical gravel road 5 feet over to the left, separated by trees. Weird. The subdivision didn't really connect to the main gravel road over Oak mountain but I was 90% sure there would be an ATV cut through and there was indeed, thankfully downhill as it was very steep. I descended the gravel down to the highway and took that all the way into Manchester, and it wasn't that bad traffic wise. It was a very fun road as highways go, very rolling and scenic with views of Pine mountain. I rolled into the Dairy Queen in town ready for something to eat and very thirsty and ready to get out of the heat. Before I left for my trip last year, on a walk almost right in front of my house I had found a DQ gift card on the path that had a full 15$ balance. Gleefully I carried this card in my wallet over some of the highest passes in the country in the hopes that I could use it somewhere, but alas, it wasn't to be. Not a single DQ that I went by on my trip all the way across the USA and Canada had indoor dining and so I never used it. This time I was in luck in Manchester, and I used the full balance and only had to pay like 83 cents for my blizzard, soda, fries and onion rings. Fueled up I left town on a gravel road that I had ridden once before and was prepared to have to negotiate a missing creek culvert. Thankfully though they had fixed it and installed a new one so that was nice. I picked my way through Meriwether county and eventually at some point I decided to not divert to come back home via south Fayette, and instead go the slightly shorter way through Haralson and Senoia. So I took the opportunity to ride a couple of gravel roads not far out of the way, and managed to survive the one mile of unavoidable Rockaway road, and enjoyed a mostly cart free cart path ride home. Was very glad to have done this trip but it for sure was on the edge of being too hot to be enjoyable. Add to this I forgot to bring both itch cream and bug spray of any kind. But overall I had a great time exploring new places and am glad I did it.