Natchez Trace Day 10

We're back in Natchez with the trikes and gear stowed in the car. We'll catch up with the blog tomorrow with photos for yesterday and stories for today.

--UPDATED --

We spent the night in the Rocky Springs Campground on the Trace Parkway and were entertained overnight with many night sounds including late arriving campers, a multitude of frogs, barred owls and screech owls.  It was quite a symphony!

We woke before sunrise to get as early of a start as we could for what we knew would a long hot day.  It didn't take long to have breakfast and pack up and we were on the road again for our last day.   The morning was cool, the traffic light,  and the road was mostly down hill.  We even saw our first deer of the trip.  It was a bicycle tourist's dream!

As we got nearer to Natchez, the traffic picked up, the temperature rose and the shade disappeared.  Our dream was becoming a nightmare -- ok, maybe that's a little severe but it was really hot and there were no shady rest stops.  The air temperature was about 90 and the humidity must have been about the same.  The last 10 miles on the Trace was just brutal.  About 4 miles before the end, Jean spotted a big tree near the road and we disregarded the treat of snakes and fire ants and pulled off for a few minutes of cooling in its shade.  With that rest, we made it all the way to the end of the Trace and on to the convenience store a mile down the road for air conditioning, sodas, and snacks.  Our ride on the Trace had come to an end.

We celebrated with big rib dinners and bread pudding and one more night of slow service.  We surely looked like we needed water but even that was slow in coming.  The moral of that story -- if you are dining in the South, go before you are hungry because you will surely be hungry by the time the food comes!

That said -- we've had a great time and feel like we've really accomplished something!  We'll even take another long bicycle tour again.

At the southern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway

At the southern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway

A soda and a chips at the first available place! We look just like we felt!

That's a cyclist's tan line!

Natchez Trace Day 9

The next to the last day (May 25)

We have no Internet access tonight so this post will be a day late.

We slept in until 6 AM since today is a relatively short day with only about 48 miles.

As we were preparing to leave the hotel drive, we were chatting with some other guests - a family on their way to a graduation. The older woman told us it is cheating to carry all that stuff looking like you are camping out when you are really staying in a nice hotel like this one. Well, tonight we are using the camping gear. While the campground is nice, a little air conditioning would go a long way after our hot ride today. A shower would be nice too.

We didn't have any problems getting out of the Jackson metro area -- probably due to the section of the road that is closed to vehicular traffic. For eight glorious miles we had the parkway to ourselves except for a few
other cyclists.


We got to chat with two local women cyclists on the bike path in Ridgeland. They took our photo and hopefully it will end up here.

At one rest stop we met a young man on his last training ride before leaving for a coast-to-coast ride with a group called PUSH to raise awareness and funds for people with disabilities.

There's a group of guys camped near us who started riding in New Orleans a few days ago and are riding north. We didn't see any other bicycle tourists today. We've been watching for Hoppy, the man from South Africa but so far haven't seen him again even though we are going the same direction.

Today's route didn't have any town stops for meeting local folks.

The ride was hot today. I don't know what the temperature was but it was hot and humid and there was a
headwind. Too much of the ride today was in the sun. We're hoping for more shade tomorrow on our last leg into Natchez.

The view above our tent

Setting up camp for the last night on the Trace.

Natchez Trace Day 8

We started the day in Kosciusko and are now in Ridgeland, a suburb of Jackson. The road for today is (was) relatively flat with maybe more downhill than up-- however, we were treated to Oklahoma-style headwind. For the 15 miles or so that the road borders the Ross Barnett Reservoir, it was especially brutal.

When we started, we weren't totally sure of how the day would go. On a ride like this, fatigue is cumulative and every morning we wake up a little more tired. We finished the day strong though with a good overall pace.

We talked to a nice park maintenance man. They have been unfailingly friendly and fine representatives of the Park Service. His opinion that people drive too fast matches what we have observed.

Farther down the road, we spoke with Dell from Rogers AR. She's with a group we've seen a couple of time across the road. She's also riding a trike and when she saw us this time, she swerved across the road to stop us and talk. They are traveling with a support vehicle and she was impressed with what we were carrying.

Our final encounter on the Trace today was late in the day. A black SUV passed us and then did a u-turn and came back -- kind of scary for a moment. When the driver slowed and rolled his window down we saw it was the state trooper who had warned us about riding side-by-side. I think he was surprised to see us still riding.

We have two days still to ride and we'll finish in Natchez on Saturday. We thought about bailing several times and Jean suggested looking for a rental car and calling it quits if today did not go well but we are riding on tomorrow.

Tonight we staying in the Hyatt Place, a very bicycle-friendly place and our new favorite hotel. Tomorrow night we'll camp at the Rocky Springs campground on the trace.

PS We've updated day 5 & 6 with more details and added some photos.

Natchez Trace Day 7

Today we had a short 45 mile ride with an hour and a half lunch break at French Camp -- excellent sandwich and broccoli salad and bread pudding. Before lunch, we climbed and then descended the biggest hill in this section of the Trace. We also passed through several miles of construction where they were laying new asphalt Asphalt fumes are not conducive to breathing well!

After lunch, it was mostly downhill. All in all a much more relaxing day than yesterday when we were trying to get as far away from Tupelo as we could, as fast as we could.

If you at following us on Spot, those long breaks in the track usually mean dense forests. We had one stretch today with with tree branches forming a complete archway over the road.

We ended the day with a quick stop in Wal-Mart for supplies before checking in to the Days Inn. Tomorrow, we'll be headed back to the Jackson area.

Natchez Trace Day 5 & 6

Too tired to blog tonight.

We're in a nice RV campground in Tupelo. Tomorrow we might check out the Elvis birthplace museum.
-- updated --

Tupelo was scheduled to be our north-eastern most point in the tour. We planned a relatively short day's ride both going to and coming from Tupelo to allow time for a little Elvis sight-seeing. Things didn't work out that way.

First, we modified our itinerary and made the day's ride to Tupelo longer - changing it from a 32 mile day to a 63 mile day. Riding 63 miles meant that we reached the Tupelo area around 3 PM. If traffic is any indication, the Tupelo economy must be booming! We rode for the next 2 hours in terrifying traffic. It was clear that the good folk of Tupelo use the Trace as a bypass highway and don't really appreciate bicycles blocking their way. Their was one kind woman who drove slowly behind us for a while and we think she was blocking traffic for us.

After considering renting a truck to haul the trikes back to Natchez, we decided instead to get out of town as soon as rush hour was over the next morning and head back to the friendlier territory south.

Day 6

We stopped at the Parkway Visitor Center on our way out of town. They told us the town traffic was worse than the trace traffic -- reinforcing our decision to forgo the Elvis museum. It just wasn't worth risking our lives.

While at the Visitor Center, we met a  man who is on an epic bike tour including Central, South and North America. He's planning to go to southern Argentina and back north to
Alaska. Check his blog at hoppyscycle.blogspot.co.uk. You might find a picture of us there.  Here's our photo from his blog

The most impressive scenery of the day was the miles and miles (6+) of damage from the April 2011 tornado near Mathiston. The devastation was incredible. Huge trees were twisted and broken like toothpicks. Some trees were standing but all their bark was stripped off. There were a few houses that looked to have been clearly in the paths of these huge tornadoes that must have been rebuilt already.

We ended the day with supper at the Trace-way Restaurant and a room at the Mathiston Motel. We very much enjoyed visiting Mathiston. The Trace-way is an archetypical small town cafe with great food and staff. We ate there four times and always there was someone who wanted to talk about the trikes and our trip. The motel is run by an Indian gentleman who told us Mississippi has the highest rate of obesity and diabetes in the US but that he has been in Mississippi for 30 years and is not obese because he is a vegetarian. The Mathiston Motel isn't the finest establishment we've stayed in but it is a big part of why Mathiston is our favorite town for the trip.

Natchez Trace Day 4

We rearranged our itinerary slightly to allow a shorter day today. We're staying tonight in a classic 1960's motel that hasn't been refurbished or had the bed replaced since then -- oh and it also has 50 years of accumulated cigarette smoke. All that said, it's a place to sleep where we needed one, has running water, electricity, and it is cheap.

Today started with nice relatively flat countryside but by the end of the ride, we had to climb the biggest hills yet. I don't know Mississippi geography but I'm pretty sure we crossed a ridge of some sort and we seem to be back into swampy fairly flat land.

We met lots of nice and chatty people who were interested in our trikes and our ride. At our Wal-Mart stop this morning, Jean talked to a very nice state trooper and a good old boy in a pick-up. While we were at the French Camp stop on the Trace, we chatted with a couple from Switzerland. The man very tactfully commented that most Americans would not do what we are doing. Finally, we met good-old boy Johnny and his wife Tammy. Johnny stopped and turned off his Harley to talk to us while we were resting under a shade tree. He told us he had lived within a few miles of the Trace all of his life. He thought our trikes were really cool.

We ended up with supper in the very popular local cafe. They had the best chicken fried steak I've had in a very long time!

Natchez Trace Day 3

Today we completed our planned 62 miles from Ridgeland to this town with a name I can't spell. Susan, you could look it up and add it in the comments.

We had a first -- a state trooper (off-duty) pulled us over to tell us we couldn't ride side by side. We didn't anymore. We also had a nice chat with a park ranger at one stop. He was an example of a fine southern gentleman unlike the first guy.

The road flattened out some today and the going was a bit easier. We did miss the down hill but not the uphill. We got our average pace up to what we normally do unloaded at home.

We ended the day at a nice little bicycle-only primitive campground on the Trace. It is unfortunately also within earshot of a state highway but hopefully the locals will turn in early.