Day 22

Day 22

Tupelo MS to French Camp MS

Today the crew had a perfect day for riding. No rain, temps around 70 degrees and we were on a great road, the Natchez Trace 1500K Trace.

We had never heard of the Natchez Trace Parkway until a fellow cyclist Wayne Cernak mentioned a cycling event on the Trace to us.  We were able to incorporate 300+ miles of the parkway into our route. What a sweet road this is too.

 Joe said we will be ruined after we leave the Trace. Sadly he is right. We have all been spoiled with the ideal riding conditions this road has offered us the past few days.
No houses, no stores, no dogs, almost no cars and a smooth relatively flat road.  It is like having your own personal interstate to use.

We passed a small sign along the road that said “Tornado Damage April 2011 Ahead”. We rode a bit further down the parkway and there it was. Huge trees with the top third twisted off and gone. You could clearly see the ¼+ mile wide path the tornado followed along the road snipping off the trees. Now the fact that something could twist off the top of a 24” diameter tree is impressive. But what blew us away was this swath of destruction went on for miles and miles and miles! Hundreds of trees wiped out.

If you were anywhere near this area during that event you would be in serious trouble. If you were so unfortunate to be in it you could not possibly have survived. No way not a chance.
Our day ended in a historic village called French Town MS. Our little wagon train settled in a beautiful historic cabin for the night.

http://www.frenchcamp.org/historic/index.cfm/historic-village/

This village is a real interesting, clean and well-kept place.  Now you have to understand we do not “plan” any of the places we are going to stay at in advance. We stay at the closest place we can find to our route hopefully between 80 -110 miles from the night before. Sometimes like tonight we are lucky sometimes we are not. It is hard to look more than a couple days ahead due to many factors.

Weather 70  degrees

Clouds

86 Miles

2370 Feet of Climbing