We opted for an early, for us, start at 7:00 to beat the afternoon heat and possible thunderstorms on the way to Ridgeland, a northern suburb of Jackson MS. Our plan must have been a good one, because it was comfortably cool as we set out. In fact, it was so comfortable that we didn't even need a sip of water for the first 11 miles. By coincidence, that happened to be the point where we realized we had left our water bottles back in the hotel in Kosciusko.
What to do? We could have continued on to Ridgeland sharing one water bottle and a camelback between the two of us for 50 miles, but then we would have needed to find a bike store in Ridgeland to replace the bottles. So we said goodbye to team S after agreeing to meet up again in Ridgeland, turned around and headed back to retrieve our lost bottles.
We have had remarkably few losses over 3 months of travelling. That's why I just remarked on it. We previously misplaced one other water bottle and a pair of sunglasses, and that was it. Not bad, not bad at all.
Since we now had a few more miles on our plate, we limited our site seeing to reading the historical markers along the Parkway and looking for new mushrooms.
Woo hoo, mile 148! Why is this significant? Only 1/3 left to go!Recall that the Parkway is 444 miles in length. After days of riding on the same road, bored cyclists will have noticed that the prime factors of 444 are 2, 2, 3 and 37.
Why are so many mushrooms growing along the Natchez Trace? The shady tree canopy keeps the ground perpetually damp, perfect for mushrooms. But not perfect for cyclists. We seem to have discovered a place that is even more humid than Florida. For those of us who sweat profusely, our clothes were soaked the entire time. I had to wring out my gloves multiple times and ended up with prune fingers. My bike shorts were like a giant diaper that was several hours overdue to be changed. The weather forecast is not calling for cooler or drier conditions for the next few days.
As we approached Ridgeland, the Parkway runs along the Ross Barnett Reservoir. The reservoir was created by daming the Perl River. If you think of Louisiana as a boot shape, the Perl River forms the border between the toe of the Louisiana boot and Mississippi. We hope to get there shortly, unless we need to detour around flooding.
We have been seeing more pines as we progress southward.
Three miles from the finish we got off the Parkway at a scenic overlook of Barnett Reservoir to get onto a local bike trail to avoid Jackson area traffic on the Parkway. There were about a dozen cars parked there which we assumed were locals who had come out to ride or hike on the trail. Wrong! Everyone was still in their cars with the engine and AC running, just looking at the reservoir. Some weren't even looking at the view, they were texting (perhaps about the view).
Nice view of Barnett Reservoir, although we were sucking in exhaust fumes from people sitting in their cars looking at the view.
Traffic on the Parkway was actually quite lite in the early afternoon, so we could have just stayed on the Parkway, but the trail was well paved and shady. We managed to get to the hotel without getting caught in rain. By then Jeanna and Kerry had already eaten, so team A went out in search of sustenance. We found a deli with an all you can eat salad bar and did just that (ate all we could).
