Monday, July 29th dawned, and I was nervous. I had told myself I was going to leave, and I was determined to hold to that, but between last-minute cleaning and prep in the house, quadruple-checking that I had everything I wanted to take with me packed into my bags like Tetris pieces, and making sure the bike was ready to go, I had more on my plate before hitting the road than I really wanted. It was nearly 4:00 P.M. by the time I finally locked my bags into place, pulled on my gear, and fired up the Twin, but I was determined to get somewhere that day, and damned if I'm not stubborn about these things sometimes.
It's hard to describe the mixture of feelings running through my head as I rode away from my house and made my way west out of Nashville; a touch of sadness at the thought that I wasn't going to see my home for close to a year, a bit of dread at the potential dangers, however unlikely, that lay ahead, slight bewilderment at the fact that I was even doing this in the first place. The biggest and best feeling of all, however, was that bubbling, adrenaline-rush, heart-racing feeling of excitement that only comes when you have embarked on something really, exceptionally cool and out of the ordinary; I hadn't even made it onto the highway yet, but already I was grinning under my helmet and tapping my fingers on the handlebars in anticipation of things to come.
And then, in the most quintessentially Nashville fashion, as though the city was giving me a final f***-you for leaving it behind, I got stuck in traffic.
After roasting through close to an hour of stop-and-go, I was thirsty, sweaty, and needed fuel, having traveled a grand total of 12 miles, but after satiating the Twin's thirst along with my own, I finally got on the road I'd been seeking all along, the one that would form the first leg of my journey: the Natchez Trace Parkway. The Trace is a 444-mile long roadway that closely follows the original Natchez Trace trade route from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville; first walked as a bison hunting trail by the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, the Trace came to be heavily used as a Revolutionary War-era trade route by boat merchants returning north after floating their goods down the Mississippi to Natchez. After the invention of the paddle steamer made it possible to travel both ways on the Mississippi and ports along the river sprang up, the Trace fell into disuse and was largely abandoned The Parkway itself was started in the 1930s as a Civilian Conservation Corps project under FDR, but wasn't fully completed until 2005. The rich history of the old Trace has led to considerable archaeological discoveries along the way, and there are markers for historical sites, natural features, and Native American ceremonial mounds and territorial boundaries seemingly ever couple of miles. In addition, many parts of the Old Trace are preserved as hiking trails, intersecting with the Parkway in numerous places. I had ridden the portion of the Trace from Tupelo to Nashville when Ngaire and I first moved in 2012, but doing the entire route was a goal I'd held since then.
While it would technically be possible to ride the entire 444 miles in one day, and I'd certainly done more than that on a couple of occasions, I had neither the daylight that first day, nor the desire to do so at all; I saw this part of the journey as an opportunity to enjoy the natural beauty of the South, and to learn more than a bit of American history. And so, I set off to do just that. It didn't hurt that I had picked a beautiful evening to start out, the sun low enough in the sky to not boil me in my riding gear, and no rain to be seen.
One of the monuments I'd most wanted to visit was the grave of Meriwether Lewis, and I managed to make it while the sun was still up. It seemed appropriate, given what I was embarking on, to stop and pay tribute to one of America's greatest explorers. Not long after leaving Lewis's grave site and having just crossed the Alabama border, fading light and a close call with a deer convinced me to stop and make camp for the night.
I awoke to find that I'd pitched camp right next to a fast-moving, spring-fed creek with a short hiking trail surrounding it, and so I started my morning surrounded by nature, hydrated with actual (filtered) spring water to boot, before packing up and resuming the journey. I'd had it in mind to make it all the way to Natchez on the second day, but finding myself in Tupelo, MS around noon, I decided I had to visit the birthplace of Elvis Presley. The museum and exhibits surrounding The King's childhood home were surprisingly subdued given the astronomical fame he achieved, and I found myself learning far more than I'd expected about the origins of and influences behind his music. Stuffing myself on lunchtime barbecue didn't hurt, either.
My meandering down the Trace continued until the late evening, when I pulled off at Rocky Springs, one of three campgrounds maintained by the National Park Service on the Trace, hoping to grab a shower before pitching camp, but was surprised and disappointed to find that not only were the showers closed, but all the running water to the site appeared to have been shut off. Between the lack of water, oppressive humidity, and nearly having my dinner stolen by marauding raccoons, it wasn't the greatest end to a long day
Once again, I woke to find that I'd inadvertently camped next to an interesting landmark, this time the abandoned town of Rocky Springs. According to the placards on site, the town had grown from a trading post on the Old Trace to a reasonably large cotton production area with a population of over 2,000. Union occupation during the Civil War, erosion of the cotton crop from nonexistent soil conservation, the expiration of the namesake spring, and both a yellow fever epidemic and boll weevil infestation in 1878 conspired to drive much of the population out, and Rocky Springs was abandoned completely by the 1890's, a Methodist church being the only remaining structure. The site was almost eerie; the ruins of cisterns, bank safes, and a few machine parts and foundation fragments are all that remains outside of the church, and the thought of a town being abandoned in the modern day for anything short of an epic catastrophe is a nearly foreign concept.
With less than 60 miles of the Trace left, I opted to continue the historical theme for the day, and detoured to the Civil War battlefield of Vicksburg, MS. After weeks of fighting and huge losses on the Union side, Ulysses S. Grant's 47-day seige of Vicksburg starved out the Confederate defenses in July 1863, surrendering complete control of the Mississippi to the Union and effectively cutting the Confederacy in half. I had learned about the Battle of Vicksburg at length in high school, but scarcely understood its importance in the Union's victory, nor the astounding lengths to which the Union army went to secure the city. Having never visited a Civil War battlefield before, I toured Vicksburg with a somber sense of awe; the scars of the war are still very much visible in the fields, trenches, and craters, and the preserved artillery, placards listing each repulsed attack by the Union army and losses sustained by both sides, and memorials to the numerous infantry, artillery, and navy units who fought at Vicksburg made it all too easy to imagine the horrors of the Civil War. I left Vicksburg knowing far more than I had coming in, and I don't think it'll be the last battlefield I visit.
Back on the Trace, I could feel the opening leg of my journey coming to an end as the miles ticked down, but still took the time for one more detour to the Windsor Ruins just north of Natchez. The site of one of the largest antebellum mansion ever built in Mississippi, Windsor was destroyed by fire in 1890, leaving 23 enormous columns that once supported the main part of the mansion as its only remains. It is one of the better-known landmarks on the Trace, and even though I wasn't able to walk among the columns, it was still a spectacular sight.
Arriving in Natchez felt at once like a relief and the start of something else entirely; there would be no more easy camping wherever I felt like, no limited-access roads that I wouldn't have to worry about sharing with many other motorists, and likely far less shade than I'd grown accustomed to. The next phase of my journey, through Louisiana and Texas, loomed large, hot, and humid in front of me.
Mileage: 620.3
Mpg: 42.8
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