The trip was beyond great, exceeded my expectations.  The weather cooperated wonderfully.  We had a couple of pretty good thunderstorms, but one came at night when we were in our tents and the other while we were eating dinner in a country store.  Other than that, there were only a few light sprinkles, too light to bother with rain gear.

The Trace was beautiful from end to end with a slight edge to the section between Jackson and Natchez.  The Trace may be Mississippi's best kept secret. The wildflowers were everywhere and beautiful.  The people I met were beautiful, too.

The parkway does not precisely follow the historical trace but the two criss-cross each other every 10-20 miles.  At first I thought that this was a kind of swindle, but now I realize that they did it that way so they would not obliterate the trace.  As it is, every now and again you come to a sign saying "Old Trace" at one of the intersections.  By far the most interesting case is at mile 40 near the southern end where the sign says, "Sunken Trace."  This is in the thick, fine loess soil windblown from the west during the last ice age and the trace is at least ten feet deep there. Very impressive and otherworldly.

My first night was at Port Gibson, a right interesting town described by Grant as "too pretty to burn."  It has many old historic homes but is especially known for its Presbyterian church because its steeple is topped with a golden hand with finger pointed heavenward in reference to the preacher who spent a lot of sermon time in a similar pose. I stayed in a B&B that was so imposing that I circled it twice looking for a servants' entrance.  It looked like Tara and I was greeted by Scarlett herself.  I mean this woman looked and talked exactly like Vivian Leigh. She was the daughter and ran the place, Oak Square Plantation, with her mother, the matriarch.  It was like a step back 150 years to a time when family and heritage was everything.  The next morning I had a three-hour breakfast during which I learned a great deal about the whole family. One son went to Miss Boys State and ran for governor, losing by a single vote.  His campaign manager was Trent Lott.  He later went to Harvard Law School and momma wondered, "I never did understand why he wanted to go there."  I opined maybe because it is widely considered the best law school in the country.  She was surprised.    When I left Scarlett gave me a big hug and said, "We could adopt you into our family real quick." I left wondering, What was that all about?  But I was also touched. The mother told me that the house was rumored to be haunted when they bought it so they had it exorcised room by room.  There are a lot of rooms. She admitted that she doubted that it was really haunted, but another house in town definitely was/is.  It was all very gothic.

The second night I was scheduled to stay at Mamie's Cottage at the Dupree House.  When I talked to them, they said there was no road from the Trace to the house but they would put up a flag to mark a trail through the woods up to their house and I could get through on my bike fine.  They said it was at mile post 79 but it would have been even better to also say that it was at a can't-miss bridge.  What I saw when I got there was a series of red plastic strips hanging from the bridge then from a tree about every 20 yards up the edge of a field, then the strips went back through the trees and there was a house.  With a tin roof and unpainted siding it hardly looked like an elegant B&B but they were wonderfully restoring it inside. Mamie's Cottage was off to the side.  Both are on the registry of national historic buildings.  We agreed that they would charge the usual price of a double but would serve dinner as well as breakfast.  Dinner was excellent and we all ate together including a friend who came by for dessert and we had inspired conversation. We talked about the latest book of Nevada Barr who, it will be no surprise, is originally from California, but who was until recently a Natchez Trace Park ranger.  Apparently, no one told her about chiggers, fire ants and poison oak when she agreed to come to Mississippi.  She writes mysteries and her latest is set in and around Rocky Springs, which I briefly visited earlier that day.  No one told me about fire ants, either, the next night when I pitched my tent.  I thought I had it zipped up pretty well but found a number of cohabitants when I tried to settle in.  You do not want to share a tent with even one fire ant, let me tell you.  I spent the first 15 minutes in a frenzied, non-EPA-approved eradication program.

The plan was to meet two friends from Maryland, Jim and Jane, north of Jackson on my third day and we would continue together.   They actually showed up and it was nice to share the Trace.  Still, I must say that I think that people are especially nice to a lone, demented cyclist.

The travel logistics would have made Ike proud on D-Day.  On the Friday before Easter Sonya and family dropped me off at noon at the Natchez end of the Trace on their way to Louisiana for Easter.  Jane and Jim were in Meridian for a family reunion that weekend and Jim's brother, who lives near Tupelo, drove them in their van from Meridian to meet me north of Jackson on Easter noon.  He then drove their van to Tupelo and left it at Ann's sister's, Glenda.  (Pay attention, it gets worse.)   Ann's brother, his wife, and Ann's mother--who live in Meridian--picked up Glenda in Tupelo on Friday and drove to the Nashville end of the Trace while Ann drove there from Little Rock.  At the same time they picked up Jim's van and drove it to Nashville in convoy with their own van.  We all met at the Loveless Cafe at the end of the Trace, arriving within 30-40 minutes of each other.  The cafe is a popular place among Nashville folks, but only us bikers seemed to enjoy the meal.  My theory is that it was familiar southern food but not in the Mississippi style and therefore "no good."  The reason for meeting in Nashville was to go to the Grand Ole Opry because Ann's mother had always wanted to see the show.

The ride through Jackson, where there is a gap in the Trace, went fine. They are working on the gap there and have the middle third complete, I understand, but nothing is open yet.  Of course, since it's the middle part, it connects to nowhere and will be unused until the other parts are finished.  Must be a clever plan behind it somewhere.

My longest day was 85 miles and, as luck would have it, that day I lost the screw holding my rear shifter together in the first few miles.  The road was new and very rough at that point and I assume that that is what caused the screw to vibrate loose.  I taped it in the middle rear gear (no, not duct tape; electrician's tape) and biked the day reduced from 24 to 3 gears.  It worked fine but could have been a problem the last couple of days in Tennessee where the granny gear was much appreciated, so I found a workable screw in a bike shop in Tupelo the next day. That day ended at Tupelo and the Trace was closed there for a mile or so for work on an overpass.  I thought, " Shoot, a bike ought to be able to get through fine," but then a guy in a pickup stopped and suggested a shorter detour than the official one so I thought, "Why not take his detour?"  About a mile into the detour it occurred to me "Why Not" as I pedaled like mad trying to outrun three--count 'em, three--serious-looking dogs.  And without high gear either.  (I was alone at that point because J&J had biked on while I stopped to try to phone a bike shop in Tupelo that could fix my shifter.)

We met a couple from Minnesota, who had a tandem recumbent bicycle they had designed and were trying out on the Trace.  She complained good-naturedly that when they drove through Oxford, they didn't see the campus of "Ole Mississippi."  I said, "Hold it!  If you call it Ole Mississippi, people will think you are from some awful place like up nawth."  She said, "Well, I'm doing a lot better than at first when I was saying 'O-lay Mississippi."

Earlier that day we stopped for breakfast in Thomastown, Mississippi, just off the Trace.  We walked into exactly the kind of store/restaurant you would expect in a small town called Thomastown in Mississippi.  All the characters from central casting were there, overalls and all.  We, of course, were in our spandex cycling shorts and jerseys.  When Jim ordered scrambled eggs, ham and grits, the lady almost dropped her pencil.  She said, "Gawdahmitey!  When I saw y'all come in, I told the cook to forget the grits and put on some hash browns."  Jim and I graduated together in Meridian and Jane is from Louisiana so grits was (were?) no stranger to us.  She was also amazed that we knew about the restaurant, which had been open less than a year.  We got it off the internet, naturally.

We saw a number of other cyclists, but mostly two large groups, one from Montreal, the other from Colorado.  We saw only one couple who, like us, did not have van support and were carrying all their stuff. We were eating at The Old Depot Cafe in Collinwood, Tennessee (not to be confused with The Old Depot Restaurant in Ft. Gibson where I also ate) when a couple came in and sat down nearby.  In a minute the guy came over and asked if the three bikes outside were ours.  There were two possibilities for the owners of the bikes: we three in our spandex or the three very portly farmers in overalls at another table.  And people say we need to teach critical thinking!  He was selling liniment, which turned out to resemble liquid BenGay. He gave us a sample of "Tennessee's Finest Liniment."

I had worried whether I was in good enough shape for the trip.  My longest training ride had been 36 miles, once, and I was not fresh at the end of it, nor was I carrying any weight.  So could I do 80 miles then 65, etc., carrying 30 pounds?  Well, it was absolutely no problem.  I never felt tired at the end of any day.  There is a great difference between doing 36 miles in a couple of hours and 85 miles in 6.5 hours with breaks, even carrying the extra weight.

I did not want the trip to end.  Had I been free to do so, I would have turned around and headed back south.
 

(click on any picture to view full size)

Links for Web sites on the Natchez Trace:

• Natchez Trace Parkway (National Park Service)
• Natchez Trace Parkway
• Natchez Trace Bed & Breakfast Reservation Service
• The Natchez Trace Parkway (a Web site by Jim Parks with Trace history, bicycling info, photos and bibliography)
• Natchez Trace Ride (six days on the Trace with Paul Dybala)
• Bicycling The Natchez Trace Parkway (Jackson to Nashville with Jeffery and Wendy Riedy)

On the bookshelf:

click on a title for order information at amazon.com