Day 8

Day Eight
Whole wheat pancakes for breakfast, cooked while sitting in the door of my tent! My own mix from home, too. Those ducks are beggars, if you walk along the shore they all come swimming up to see if you have bread for them! The last picture is walking back from the "comfort facilites", my tent up on the slab, and my riding companion camped down on the slope. I prefer not to slide down the hill while I sleep! Ha ha! I put a thick layer of pine needles and leaves on the slab before I set up my tent. It cushions my air mattress nicely.
Today is rest day, after 7 days of riding! We pedaled 473.6 miles this week. My body is ready for a rest! It's sunny and 82 today, and I've been laying in my tent reading most of the day. I have the tent door open and I'm looking out over Haynes Lake. It's a nice, quiet campground with lots of tall trees, and hills and ridges surrounding it. In a little while we're going to ride out to a gas station/convenience store on the highway (2 miles away) that some people here think might have WIFI, and I can upload all this to my journal. I probably won't have time to put the pictures on it now, but at least the text will be there and you'll all know what's been going on. I'll add the pictures later. Sorry about that! I hear you folks up north have had cold and/or snowy weather. I sure hope that improves soon for you.

Day Seven

It was cold this morning! It got down to 35 degrees, and the tents were soaked with dew. I had everything away from the sides, so none of my stuff was wet, but it's the second day in a row I could have wrung my tent out and had to pack it up wet! This first picture was taken this morning. Then there's a Redbud tree along the road, and the winding road of Mississippi stretching off through some grassy fields. We were ready to roll by 7:30, and off we went. It was sunny and warmed up quickly, so we kept stopping to take off layers of cold-weather clothes. We rode to Tupelo, 32 miles to where we turned off into town. Lunch at McDonalds, then a stop at a gas station/convenience store for "trail food". No matter how hard you try, it's almost impossible to eat healthy when traveling, especially in Mississippi. We do the best we can and figure the hard days of pedaling takes care of the rest. A lot of the gas stations have baskets of bananas, apples, and oranges, and some have granola bars and power bars, and the V-8 fruit juice I like. Those grassy mounds in the picture above are Indian burial mounds. They make clay buriel pits in the bottom, then using baskets they haul dirt and make those huge mounds over the bodies, of their leaders and special people.
We finished in Tupelo, which by the way, is a very nice town, and headed back up the Trace. We still had more than 40 miles to ride. As we left Tupelo the wind shifted and was behind us for a while. That was nice, since we were now in hilly country and the road was winding this way and that. The trees are starting to look more "north", and there were ridges and ravines, and still lots of wildflowers along the road. The Redbud trees are brighter and more colorful because they haven't been in bloom as long as the ones farther south. The color starts to fade after they've been in bloom a while. It's beautiful rolling along the road, lined with green grasses and trees, wildflowers in yellow, purple, pink, and white, and the whites and purples of the Dogwood and Redbud trees. Add in the blue sky and an occasional puffy cloud curling around the tree tops or scudding along the sky, and it's very pleasant. Every day we've seen at least a couple Turkey Vultures circling in the sky. We've only seen one live deer and one turkey. Some mornings we hear roosters crowing off in somebody's chicken pen. You can't see much in the way of houses or anything as you ride along. The National Park Service owns a swath that varies from 1/4 to 1/2 mile wide, and they've removed everything except "nature". Even historical things are gone. If they were in the park service corrider, then they were removed. Scary the power of the Environmentalists. It almost gets monotonous riding day after day seeing nothing but the trees and grass, and missing all the little towns and the flavor of the south. When we need to go to a store we usually have to ride at least a mile off the Trace. Even going through big towns like Jackson and Tupelo all we could see were trees, though we could hear all the traffic and we went over busy roads. The trace is very isolated. Sometimes I feel like I've lost track of time and distance, like I'm in the twilight zone!
When I get so tired I feel as though I can't pedal even one more stroke, I find the strength somewhere. And I know some of you out there are praying for me, because when I'm at the end of my rope and thinking about finding a dumpster for my bike (ha ha!), somehow I get above that and I'm all right. The hardest thing on me is how achy and tired my wrists and elbows get from being braced on the handlebars all day. I keep stretching and bending them, but they still ache by the end of the day. It's only annoying, not debilitating.
We got to Tishomingo State Park a little after 5:00. It's in Northeast Mississippi, not far from the Alabama state line. We were assigned site #9 in the campground, a lovely site at the shore's edge of Haynes Lake, which according to the park brochure is stocked with Catfish, Bream (sunfish), and Bass. There are ducks and geese wandering around looking for handouts. We're within site of the showerhouse building, which is where I'm headed next. Miles ridden today: 77.6

Day 6

Day Six
The first pictures above are from last night, including one of my tent in the campground, and one of a cool-looking tree nearby. Then there's a picture of me and my bike it our rain covers!
Shortly after midnight last night it started to rain, and the wind blew, and I laid in my tent thinking about those tall, tall trees all around me! Then the lightening and thunder strarted! There was a lot of it, and the lightening was pretty bright, but I don't think it passed directly overhead. The closest I counted (between the flash and the "boom") was 2 miles away. It was still pretty loud! I snuggled down in my sleeping bag and imagined classical music, perhaps Beethovan's 5th?, and went back to sleep. Well, okay, first I assessed the tornado risk and thought about the two ditches within running-to distance, and prayed that we'd be safe, THEN I snuggled down and went back to sleep. It was still raining lightly at daybreak, but quit about half an hour later. I was happy with the performance of my tent, since only the foot of my sleeping bag and air mattress were damp. But then I must have sprayed 5 lbs of sno-seal and seam sealer on the tent before I left home! We packed everything up and covered all our bags with the rain covers, and pedaled off in our rain suits. About 20 miles later we reached a place called "French Camp" (see picture. Also picture of me and my bike in all our little rain covers!), where we finally were able to shed the rain gear! Just off the Trace was the old trading post, fixed up as a musem, and they had free blueberry muffins (Bring on the muffins, hold the coffee!) and the cutest little half-pomeranian, half-shitzu dog! She was a little beggar and sure enjoyed pieces of the muffins!
Then we rode on. We stopped at a couple little gas station stops off the trail near towns. The second time they had a fried chicken and catfish stand. They were out of chicken so I got brave and had a piece of fried catfish, breaded and deep-fried, then had a second one. They tasted more "fishy" than I'm used to, and also had a taste I can only describe as "bottom of the lake" taste, but it was a nice change from sugary garbage. I hope the next stand isn't out of chicken, but if it is, at least I know the catfish is pretty good!
So far the day had been mostly sunny and in the mid-60s, but now, for the last 30 miles of pedaling, it was cloudier and the wind shifted to the northwest. We were going north. Sometimes in open fields we were pedaling right into it, then we'd hit a patch of trees and it would shelter us from it somewhat. There was a lot more uphill today too, and overall it was a harder day. We ended the day at another free campground called "Witch Dance", and when I finally found the sign it explained that once upon a time the locals believed the witches came there to dance, and wherever their feet touched the ground, grass wouldn’t grow. There were little bare spots scattered all through the woods, about the size of a footstep! I got out my campstove tonight and made stew (freeze dried), and ate saltines with it, and I made hot chocolate. It felt good to have a hot meal after such a long, hard ride. We rode 78 miles today.

Day 5

Day Five

It was 62 degrees at daybreak this morning, and it got up to 87 this afternoon. Mostly sunny with some big, puffy clouds and a tail wind for the most part. No real hills today, just a few grades that required a little gearing down. How's that for a perfect bicycling day? We packed up camp and went to the McDonalds up the street, where I had a sausage biscuit (no egg, no cheese) and a cup of orange juice. Then we headed 5 miles back through town to the Trace (trail). What can I say about our adventure riding loaded bicycles through morning rush hour traffic in Jackson, population 184,586 (or whatever the new 2010 census shows), state capitol of Mississippi? Let's skip that part and the part about our accelerated pulse, raised blood pressure, and adrenalin rush... Oh yeah, and no shoulders or bike lanes on the streets. Back on the Trace we pedaled on north, and the trail followed along the west shore of the reservoir (Ross Barnett Lake. I looked at the map) for about 15 miles. It was cool. There were lots of guys fishing today, some with four rods off the front of their boats, and some fishing from shore. Lots of Herons along the water's edge. I stopped and took a picture of one. There's also a picture of a brave little tree growing out of a stump in the water!
Then we left the water, other than the gooey swamps among the trees on both sides of the trail. I wouldn't want to fall into any of THAT water! It's mucky and muddy and smells rank, like swamps should! it might be kind of cool to paddle slowly around in there with my kayak, except for the part about alligators and snakes (Cottonmouths, water moccasins, etc.)! I took several pictures of the Cyprus swamps along the trail!
We stopped a few times to sip water and have snacks, and went off into the town of Kosciusko for lunch/dinner. I love the names around here. We passed Yockanookany earlier today, north of the reservoir. The Yazoo River was west of us, and the Lobutcha River to our east. We've also gone through such places as Grindstone Ford, Mount Locust, and Pigeon Roost. Most of the historic waysides along the trail either relate to the Choctaw Indians (Chief Red Dog was one of the first to adopt the white's ways of farming) or the Civil War. There have been two confederate cemeteries and a few Civil War battlefield sites. The colored people here call it the “Slave War”.
After we grabbed some food (I got stuff like bananas and apples and juice...well, okay, and I got a small bottle of "sweet tea", that famous southern drink, and was disappointed the gas station didn't have one of those Southern fried chicken stands) we rode out to the Bicycle-only campground on the edge of town. We were the only ones there, other than the hundreds of cars that passed steadily on Hwy. 35 right next to the campground. We could see the gas station and other businesses across the highway. They had nice tent pads at the campground, 4 of them, level, too! It was nice to be setting up camp so early, around 5:00. I was looking forward to an evening of relaxing and reading. Everything was covered with greenish-grayish dust, or in other words: pollen! I blew it off the picnic table before we set things on it, and our shoes were coated with it as we walked through the grass. We rode 66.2 miles today.

A campground with Wifi!

The campground has wireless internet! And I have my laptop-mini! Yay! Which is how you've all been able to read all these posts! I haven't even had a shower yet after riding, I've been on the internet all evening doing this! But that shower is coming up soon, it's dark now and I still haven't dug out my flashlight. Here's a picture of the river below the dam, which if you enlarge the picture you can see the people fishing. I don't know what river it is, or what reservoir we're camped by, but it's on the north side of Jackson, Mississippi. Something about pedaling ridiculous numbers of miles in humid, almost-90 degree weather melts the brain to where you don't notice such details as names of lakes or towns or highways! You can see my laptop computer sitting on my bike saddlebag, where I've been sitting in my tent. I can even reach the electric outlet here at our campsite! In the last picture you can see both tents and bikes. We pedaled 61.5 miles today.

Day 4, more

There's a lot of water along the wayside, some places among tall, dark trees. Cool-looking. Hard to snap pictures while riding, but often I don't feel like stopping and then having to get the bicycle in motion again (all that gear, remember? 50-lb load, plus me!). Still waiting to see an alligator! We stopped at one of the visitor centers along the trail, on the edge of Jackson, and this wire bicycle thingy was out front! I leaned my bike against a post and sat in one of those wooden rockers. More bicycles came in, probably about 20 at the height, and there was a couple from Niagra Falls, and the guy had two feathers sticking out of his bike helmet. His wife laughed and said they call him "Chief Two Feathers"! There were wildflowers all along the trail near Jackson, mostly in the sunny areas.

Day 4, part one

The overnight low was 67, and the high today was 84. Light breeze and clear sky. (just rubbing it in to you people in the cold north!) It was another one of those humid mornings, and everything outside was covered in dew. I had bought a cheap shower cap at Walgreens before I came on this trip, and I put it over my bike seat at night. Everything else comes in the tent with me. We packed up camp and headed up the trail. It was about 30 miles to Jackson, and the first Wal-mart or fast food places we'd seen the whole trip! We stopped at the first one we came to: Wendy's. Time for a Double with cheese and a Frosty. Every little gas station in Mississippi seems to have a fried chicken stand. I forgot to mention that yesterday as we were leaving Port Gibson we each got a chicken breast at a gas station on the edge of town. It was run by this little old black lady, and that chicken was so good, it's what defines what GOOD fried chicken is. Real, honest-to-goodness (kind of in a "Mc-heart-attack kind of way!) Southern fried chicken! Anyway, after Wendy's I went to Wal-mart and bought some stove fuel for my backpacking stove, so NOW I can start eating the dehydrated and freeze-dried stuff I brought from home, and kick the "sweet tea and candy bar" diet! Then we got back on the trace, rode up to the north end of Jackson and east and north and this way and that way in the going-home rush hour traffic to the city campground on the reservoir. We're near the dam, and below the dam are a bunch of people fishing for catfish. One guy had about a 15-lb catfish on the bank near him. The guy in the picture above was riding on the trace, and his wife has his gear in their car and meets him each night at the campground. Later we met him riding back... his wife had called on the cell phone, the car wouldn't start and he had to ride 10 miles back to the campground!