Day 4 - Natchez, MS to Tupelo, MS

We're all thankful that the weather channel isn't necessarily always right in their forecasts. We had an incredibly nice day today with only a small amount of light showers. Yeah!

We started out from our hotel trying to find the beginning of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which was very close according to the map. However there was construction and they re-routed us to get on the parkway further down which was really frustrating. We wound up getting on around mile marker 8 and then we rode all the way back to the beginning, then turned around and started back again. We want to ride the whole thing from mile one, darn it! Some of you may recall that this same thing happened to Steve and I on the Blue Ridge Parkway, so apparently we're not meant to start out at the very beginning of these things.

Once we were on the Parkway, it was smooth sailing. It's so great to ride these roads as they aren't open to commercial vehicles, there's no cross roads or traffic, just a beautifully maintained, park like setting with a nice two lane road through the entire thing. No stop signs, no lights, just continual riding through lovely scenery. In fact, the scenery was constantly full of trees and green fields and the road was so gently winding, we found ourselves all getting sleepy and had to pull over several times for breaks. There just aren't any distractions to keep your attention on this road. The one thing I had going for me was the "soundtrack" in my helmet. I was wiggling and dancing down the road, singing at the top of my lungs. Good thing nobody could hear me, though I personally think that if I were an additional member of Cold Play or Roxy Music, their songs would be much improved with my added vocals. ;-)

We only made one stop at one of the many historical markers along the way, and that was at the Mount Locust Inn, an old stopping place for people taking the Trace. It was just a small, old house but pretty neat to see a part of the trail history. We also drove by the Ross Barnett Reservoir which was a nice change and was really pretty.

We stopped for lunch around Jackson. It's such a bummer to get off the nice, mellow Parkway and back in to city traffic. In fact I was getting pretty grumpy trying to find a place to accommodate my vegetarian eating, and when they put me in the lead to pick something out I gave in and decided to have some "desperation" meat. Most of you know what I'm talking about there. I had some Chik patties at this place called Krystal Burger, which I guess is like a White Castle. Even though I ate chicken, I felt much better having some food in my stomach and cooling off in the a/c.

Back on to the Parkway for the second half of our day, we began to wonder if the scenery was ever going to change on this 440 mile road. It's all very beautiful, but there's not much variation. We stopped at an information center and met a couple from Montreal traveling on motorcycles. We had a nice break chatting with them and the staff at the center. The couple was heading back home from a trip down to New Orleans and it sounded like they must have been on the road for quite awhile. We passed them and vice versa a couple times more along down the road.

We only ran in to about 20 miles of light rain and it was actually really pleasant. Again, we only put our rain suits on when it seemed like it was getting a little heavier and the road spray was soaking our jeans. Of course, after putting them on we only had about 15 more miles of rain and then the remaining 30 miles in to Tupelo were dry and sunny. All in all a great ride and no complaints about the weather. Let's hope we're just as lucky tomorrow on our way up to Nashville.

Click here for pics from today. I'm trying something new with this link and sending you directly to a slide show. Send me a comment if you like or dislike it :)