Travel Day

Our goal is the resort town of Ibusuki, but with rain in the forecast, and Ibusuki being just a little far for one day through mountains (66 miles), we decided on a short day of biking to avoid the rain, do laundry, etc. This took us along the coast to the town of Minamisatsuma. The coast was very busy, with lots of vehicles going up and down the road. The road itself did not have a lot of room, as it was a cliff on one side and the ocean on the other, so this was not one of the more pleasant rides. The coast was nice, though, even with the overcast conditions

Those clouds are the rain we are riding into

We quickly turned off the main road into the mountains to avoid the heavy traffic and spent the next four hours working our way through the wilderness towards Minamisatsuma. This became a race against time, as climbing mountains is slow business and the rain was nipping at our heels. The route was once again beautiful, with small mountain roads surrounded by forest, but we were so focused on beating the weather, we didn't take any additional pictures.

We rolled into Minamisatsuma a little after noon with the rain just starting to come down. Our hotel de jour, the Sunstay Kaseda, had a check in time of 3:00pm, so we have a few hours to kill before our room would be ready. So we dropped our luggage at the front desk, parked our bikes in the back, said goodbye to the hotel's cockatiel, who seemed very interested in the guests, and walked to the nearest place that we could squat for a few hours without being kicked out: McDonalds. Free wi-fi, fast food, and a roof was the order of the day, and we got somewhat caught up with emails and blogs until we could check in.

The rest of the day was quite boring: laundry, cleaning, etc in preparation for our ride into Ibusuki tomorrow.