Week 123: to Chickasaw Council: a fine cool day on the Trace

August 2, 2017

After our raccoon adventure last night we do sleep well. “That was quite the sight” Rachel says to Patrick, “you standing in the campground in your underwear throwing pinecones at the raccoon. And how did you hear the rain?”

Just before it gets light Patrick notices a light ticking on the tent so he bolts out to clip the small loose rainfly thing that the Staika tent has over the ridge. The doors are zipped-up and it rains. We lay-in for a while listening to the ticking, but decide to get going once it lets up. It’s a nice cool morning with a thick cloud cover; we’ll not see the sun until we almost arrive at our destination. That’s just fine with us.

It’s a long ride today with not much different to look forward to. We just mentally click off the miles counting down today’s distance, something we don’t really like to do, but with every mile along the Trace marked with a steel post they are hard to miss. We stop at Witch Dance rest area and have lunch in the very nice bikers-only camp area with restrooms and water. It was too far for us from Kosciusko, but this would make a nice overnight stop.

We are a little worried about the campground where we plan to stay. It is not marked on the Trace map because they don’t promote any off-site businesses, but we saw a CGOAB journal of some other guys that stayed here a while back. We did not remember all the specifics, except that the guy was a friendly Veteran. On a notice board at Witch Dance we saw that this place is marked as “RV-only”. We decide to go for it and not stop at Davis Lake which would be off the Trace about 5 miles. If we are refused we’ll have to ride on to the Tupelo Trace HQ that also has a bike-only camping area.

Well, the Natchez RV Park does take tent campers; in fact, there is a nice covered picnic area where the host tells us to camp and right next to a nice lawn. There is a bathroom in the reception building, a fridge with ice and a book exchange that is perfectly timed for us. The only disappointment is that there is no WiFi. We’ll just keep our journal up-to-date on our netbook and upload everything when we can, just like we did in Mongolia.

Old Natchez Trace. The new paved parkway follows the old trace loosely, sometimes the old route is miles away, sometimes it is right there.

Bicyclists rights. If car drivers would just pay attention to this.

Saved a Eastern Box Turtle from the road. They can completely protect their legs because of the hinges on the bottom shell. If it has red eyes it is a male. If yellow, it is a female. Thanks Bill.

Lunch break at Witch Dance Park. There is a bicyclist only camping area here, but we want to get further down the trail today.

Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 36,496 km (22,664 miles)

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