Day 3, part one

It was colder last night, got down to 56 degrees! Not as humid this morning either. There were owls hooting this morning, which was cool to hear! We rode back to the Trace and headed North once again. There wasn't much in the way of actual hills, but there were grades where you were either geared down and working some, or coasting along gently with easy pedaling. The white blossoms on the tree to the left are Dogwood. The air was filled with the sweet scent of grass and clover, and sometimes sweeter yet with flowers, and occasionally the lovely tang of wild onions (made me want to buy a steak somewhere and cook it!). Back on the highway we were often assailed by the smell of roadkill, mostly possums, snakes, and turtles. Enough to feed a small town for a week. We did find a bunch of turkey vultures eating "something" off in the edge of the woods. They flew up into a tree when we rode by (see picture). Lots of creeks, mostly slow-moving muddy ones, but this one was more sandy and the current was moving right along. The bridges are all these really old concrete ones, which are great to lean my bike agains! Nice to sit on, too. Around mid-day we went a mile or so off the trail to the town of Port Gibson for lunch/snacks. It was a lovely old plantation town, but the traffic was terrible and no space for bicycles. It took all my attention to get through this town in one piece! But we had to stop for a minute to cross a street, so I snapped a couple pictures. Sadly, there was a "historic" district with lovely old homes, then the rest of the town was real run down. I mean, dirt-poor poverty. Shacks. Just real poor. The only white person I seen in town was an older lady in the hardware store. We went to a grocery store and a gas station, too. The people were SO friendly and nice. It's been like that all over down here. Of course, 6 years in Southeast Kentucky helped, I can speak the "language" here!