Day 157: LaFleur's Bluff State Park, Jackson, MS

We had planned a late start today because leaving early would have meant riding through commute traffic in Jackson, MS.  That was fortunate, as we discovered that we were infested with sugar ants.  The main casualty was Lana's nearly full bag of dog food.  Things probably would have been much worse, except for the fact that the cupboards were just about bare.  Fortunately, we had some dollar-store ant spray to deal with the problem.  The ants had used the power cord to gain entry to the galley.

Alea started riding a bit after 9 am, hoping that traffic would have thinned out a bit in Jackson, MS.  It hadn't, and there was no southern hospitality to be found on that stretch of the Trace (which goes through the northwestern outskirts of the city).  She avoided a good part of the stress by getting on a bike path, only to find that it ended abruptly on a hill above the Trace, four and a half miles from the last point of direct access to the Trace.  Bushwhacking down the hill wasn't an option, as this is the south, so slogging through tall grass isn't a good idea (too many poisonous snakes).  Besides, Alea's knee probably wouldn't have fared too well on the uneven ground.  But she doubled back and eventually got through her 25 miles of riding for the day.

Alea was off the road by 11 am and it was already over 90 degrees out.  At one point the temp hit 97 degrees, and when we checked the weather report in the evening it was 87 degrees with a 98 degree heat index.  So we are guessing the heat index today was somewhere near 108.  It will be around the same tomorrow, but then it should dry out a bit, and it might even cool off some as well.

With our riding done for the day, we went in search of a bike shop.  The first one only sold crappy KMC chains, so we decided to look elsewhere (we would need to replace a KMC chain every 2-3 months, whereas a Shimano chain will last 3-4 months).  Along the way, we restocked the pantry and bought more dog food for Lana.

We ended up at The Bike Rack, which was located not far from where we are camping.  They replaced Alea's chain in a flash, but my bike turned into a bigger project.  I had them check to make sure the bottom bracket or crank arms hadn't loosened, as there was starting to be a creaking sound on my pedal downstroke.  It turns out a bearing was going bad, and they had to get the replacement from another store.  So we left it there overnight and went to set up camp.

We are camped at Mayes Campground in LaFleur's Bluff State Park ($19.44, power, water and adjustable showers).  We've decided to stay two nights, as that gets us on schedule for our campground reservation for the Labor Day Weekend in Louisiana. 

Our bath house, on stilts.  Check out the wrap around ADA ramp.

Once we had set up, we found that we hadn't completely rid ourselves of sugar ants.  There were quite a few that had hidden under the false floor of our deep storage compartment, where the dog food, bread and other bulky items are stored.  Others had hitched a ride in the power inlet at the back of the camper.  We were amazed to see where the ants had eaten a whole in the bag of our fresh loaf of bread, just hours after having bought it.  So we emptied everything out and removed the false floor so that we could spray all of the unwanted guests.  We learned that anything that we had stored in ziplock bags survived the ant onslaught, so we poured Lana's new bag of dog food into two gallon-size ziplocks to keep the ants from getting into her food again.

Since we had only reserved for one night, that meant a trip back to the registration shack.  On the way there, Alea had a flat tire.  Of course we could have called either Ford or USAA roadside assistance to change it, but that generally means a few hour wait, at a minimum.  So I walked over to where she had stopped and changed the tire (we'll need to get the tire fixed before we leave town).  Of course it was pretty hot and humid, so it was a bit less fun than one normally has changing a flat.

Day 156: Goshen Springs Campground, MS

The nearest campground was a fair distance down the road, so Alea and I once again shared the riding.  And it was forecast to once again be hot and humid, so we were on the road before 7 am.  We finished just after noon, covering the 81 miles in three parts: I rode the first 28 miles, Alea rode the next 31 miles and I did the final 22 miles.

We are camping at Goshen Springs Campground ($22.66, power, water, adjustable showers and free wi-fi), located on Ross Barnett Reservoir, just north of Jackson, MS.  We camped here last fall, and  liked it well enough, plus there aren't any other choices that are any better.  They have inexpensive laundry, so we took advantage of that.  A couple days ago Lana threw up a bunch of bile not long before we were to get up in the morning (we are hoping it was caused by something she found and ate at one of the campgrounds we've stayed at).  It soaked into our duvet cover and our goose down comforter and was fairly noxiously pungent, so we were very anxious to get those washed.  Unfortunately, the down comforter (which we had washed just last week) was a casualty, spewing feathers everywhere.

Tomorrow will be a short mileage day, as we will stop in Jackson, MS to get our bikes worked on.

Days 154 & 155: Jeff Busby Campground, MS

Since it was the weekend, we ended up spending two nights at Davis Lake.  We took advantage of our day off to get the camper and van washed, and to take a look at our expenses for the past year.  Regarding the latter: in a nutshell, we spent more than we had planned.  Part of that was related to getting the van, camper and bikes optimized for living the way we are.  And part of that was about $4,000 in unexpected expenses.  Some other factors were the high cost of camping on the East Coast, some deferred maintenance that led to several unexpected bike repairs and the fact that we are driving quite a bit more than we had anticipated.  We'll likely analyze all that and decide upon some changes to keep our expenses from getting out of hand in the future.

Sunrise at Lake Davis.

Anyway, last night Alea announced that she had run out of wine, and suggested that we find some more.  I jumped into the Wayback Machine and took a look at a similar situation that took place in the exact same place last year.  We are surrounded by counties that are dry or that severely restrict alcohol sales.  Last year, that meant going nearly 100 miles out of our way to Starkville, MS (we hadn't realized that when we started our quest).  So we did some Googling and found that the nearest place to buy wine was in Shannon, a little more than 20 miles away.  But it wasn't open on Sunday.  So at 7pm on Saturday we loaded up to do some wine shopping.

But when putting everything away in preparation to leave, we noticed that the temperature on our refrigerator was 42 degrees (we have it set to 35 degrees).  That sometimes happens when the lid doesn't quite get shut all the way, but that didn't seem to be the issue this time.  And we clearly had power.  We checked the manual, and the troubleshooting chart narrowed our issue down to a possibly defective compressor.  "Great!," we thought.  But Alea suggested just turning it off and turning it back on.  I concurred, thinking these things are more like computers nowadays, and perhaps it just needed to be rebooted.  We figured we would check on it when we got back.

But when we jumped in the van, it wouldn't start.  We aren't too sure why this happened, but it may have been during the time that we spent waiting out the rain when we arrived here.  We usually have our headlights set to Auto, so they come on when the key is in the ignition.  So whether that was the problem or not we will never know.  All we knew is that the van wouldn't start.

We got in the back of the van and dug out the generator.  It comes with "jumper cables," which in actuality is a plug with two thin wire cables with which we can recharge the battery, not jump it.  Of course accessing the van's battery turned out to be a bit of a chore.  The positive terminal is up front, but the negative terminal is buried in a cramped space with perhaps 2" of vertical clearance.  So it took a while to figure out how to attach the tiny alligator clips in order to start charging the battery, but we were eventually successful.  After about 20 minutes of charging we were able to get the van started and be on our way.

Of course by then it was starting to get dark, and there is no direct route from Davis Lake to Shannon, MS.  And the street numbers on Google Maps didn't match what we were finding on the ground.  But eventually we made it there, only to find cheap wine at twice the price that we've seen it anywhere else.  But we were successful.  And when we returned to the campground, we found the refrigerator was at 35 degrees.

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The other big news of the weekend was that Alea has finally decided it is time to return to Boise to have her knee replaced.  It doesn't give her any problems when cycling, but walking has become more and more of an issue.  At first it was simply enough to avoid uneven surfaces, then distance became an issue and now she needs to walk more slowly to avoid aggravating it.

So we are tentatively planning on being in Boise in January, where we will need to find some temporary accommodations while Alea is going through the recovery and rehab.  We are hoping to be back traveling again around May or June.

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Alea rode 52 miles today (Sunday) to Jeff Busby Campground (free, water available, flush toilets).  We were the only ones here when we got here, which we had pretty much expected.  We were here last fall, and even then on a Saturday there were only a half dozen sites occupied.

Camping here will be our first real test of the solar panels that we bought back in New York.  We've used them before, though not for any appreciable length of time.  Today we may have several hours of charging time, albeit in dappled light.  The campground is heavily wooded, so we don't expect a lot from the panels, even if we spend a lot of time chasing after the sun.  We're just hoping that it can maintain the battery voltage around 12 volts until the sun goes down.  That would pretty much assure us that the refrigerator will stay cool until morning.

End of the day for Alea.

Our new solar panels.

Day 153: Davis Lake Campground, MS

With the high heat and humidity, our daily cycling becomes a mad scramble to cover our miles as quickly as possible, in order to avoid the worst of the heat.  So it was today, though we also had the threat of afternoon thunder showers to be concerned about.  We were out of the campground before 6:30 am (the sun wasn't quite up yet, but it was still 81 degrees out) and I was on the bike a short time later (it was only 75 degrees on the Trace).

Lana, the prairie dog.

My bike's shifting has improved considerably, though I did need to stop a few times to make some minor adjustments.  I eventually got things working pretty smoothly and managed to make good time.  The terrain has once again flattened out a bit, but we had more traffic on the Trace today than for the past several days combined.

I was riding on one stretch where oncoming traffic was attempting to pass in my lane (there's no bike lane on the Trace).  The first time I just looked at the guy in disbelief as he sped by me.  The second time I wasn't in a mood for a repeat, so I jumped in the center of the lane before he got out of his lane and looked at him thinking "What the hell are you thinking?"  Fortunately, I won that game of chicken.

But I guess I need to back up a bit.  On the Trace, bicycles are allowed to use the entire lane, and traffic is required to change lanes when passing (some actually do this).  Motorists are also required to maintain a minimum distance of three feet from any cyclist (the ones who don't must only know the metric system).  So how does anyone add the two of those together and figure it's OK to use my lane to come screaming toward me at 70 mph, leaving me perhaps a couple of feet of unused pavement???

Of course that was near Tupelo, one of the two urban areas on the Trace.  We had the same sort of experience last year, and we'll likely get some of the same when we go through Jackson in a few days.

Anyway, the highlight of our day was meeting a group of several women from Memphis who were bicycle touring the southern half of the Trace, having done the northern half together last year.  We seem to have chatted with them just long enough, as a half mile from the end of my 51 mile ride it began to rain.  Then the thunder and lightning began.  And 15 minutes later, as we arrived at our campground, it let loose for well over an hour, and there were repeated flash flood alerts broadcast for our area.  So we waited in the van for it to stop before setting up camp for the night.

We are camped at Davis Lake Campground ($20, power, water, push button showers), where we had camped last year.  In fact, we are in the same campsite.  Last year, it was one of the last available sites.  This year, it happens to be one of the best shaded campsites, so we should be more comfortable here than elsewhere.

The rain finally did clear, and thankfully it cooled things down to a tolerable level.

Day 152: Piney Grove Campground, MS

Alea would have had an easy 30 miles today, if she had started earlier.  We didn't get rolling until 9:30, when it was already 86 degrees and a forecast heat index for later in the day of 105.  And we had just entered the Mississippi Hills, so there was a fair amount of climbing in store for her.  But we were fortunate that there were lots of places to stop to keep her hydrated and fueled up.  We stopped for the day near where the Trace crosses the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.  It was 95 degrees out when we loaded her bike in the van.

We are camped for the night at Piney Grove Campground ($22, power, water, adjustable showers).  It is located on Bay Shores Lake, and is one of the better layouts for a Corps of Engineers campground.  We are camped next to one of the three centrally located shower houses (for 140 campsites), and it is a short walk down to a shallow beach that is perfect for helping Lana cool off in this heat.  And, thankfully, there is plenty of shade.

Along the way here we met our second cyclist in the past two months.  Dyron is from Little Rock and he is headed to Virginia (Richmond, I think).  We are guessing his time is limited, as he was on his triathlon bike and had ridden 177 miles yesterday.  To beat the heat he was on the road by 4 am today, and I'd guess when we met him before noon he had probably covered 80 miles or better.  He is riding from Holiday Inn to Holiday Inn (where possible), as he has lots of reward points, allowing him to stay for free, and that obviously also makes it possible for him to travel very light.  I met him at one of the pull outs where I waited for Alea - she was heading south and he was heading north.

The forecast for the next 10 days looks to be generally lows in the low to mid 70s, highs in the low to mid 90s.  And more than enough humidity.  Oh, boy!  Missouri heat wave all over again (only it is normal weather for this time of year down here).

We've seen coin-op ice machines, but this is the first honor-pay cooler that we have run into.

Days 150 & 151: J. P. Coleman State Park, MS

The heat and humidity are coming back, but at least I now have new front chainrings!  For the past several days I've had to ride in the big chainring the majority of the time, because on the small chainring I could only use my lowest gear.  Using any of the others would cause the bike to shift by itself.  If it shifted to a harder gear it generally wasn't anything to worry about.  But if it shifted down a gear, I would lurch forward and toward which ever leg was on the downstroke at that particular moment.  If it was my left leg, then I'd veer out into traffic, and if it was my right leg I would risk veering off the pavement.  So I'm glad to once again be able to use whichever gear I need, without fear of unpleasant consequences.

New chainrings!  Woo-Hee!  Happy, happy!!

We visited pretty much all of the roadside stops along the Trace last year when we traveled through here, so this year it's more like a bike-friendly expressway to get us through the Deep South.  We rode a total of 63 miles on Tuesday: I did the first 32 and Alea finished off, stopping at Colbert Ferry, just south of the Tennessee River.  We passed into two new states, Alabama and Mississippi.  

Did you say you want the right foot in and the left foot out?
In or out of which state??

We opted to camp a ways to the west of the Trace for a couple of days, at J. P. Coleman State Park ($25.18, power, water, air conditioned bath house with adjustable showers).  We paid an extra $4 per night to be on the water, thinking it will be a good way for Lana to stay cool, and for us to catch an occasional breeze off the water.  The first thing that she did when she got here was to chase off a gaggle of Canadian Geese, so she has more than a few admirers camped nearby (all except for the guy at the end, whose site is where the geese moved to).

Sunrise, from our campsite.

The other night we took a look to see where there were Aldi stores along our route, and were dismayed to learn that nearby Muscle Shoals, AL and Conroe, TX (700 miles away) are the last Aldis that we will pass near until we get to Calexico, CA (an additional 1,400 miles past Conroe)!  Only two Aldis for over 2,000 miles (that's by freeway, it's probably quite a bit farther along our route)!  So we drove out of our way to Muscle Shoals to stock up.  In particular, they've recently had a limited supply of Indian Simmer Sauces ($2 a jar) that are awesome, especially the Jalfreezi and Tikka Masala sauces.  So we loaded up on those, and a few of our regular Aldi staples.  Hopefully it will be enough to get us to Conroe in another month or so.

A vanishing sight - fording a stream at the entrance to J. P. Coleman State Park.

We took the extra day off to keep from getting ahead of ourselves, and decided to take the opportunity to visit nearby Shiloh National Military Park on Wednesday.  The National Park Service does a pretty awesome job of interpreting the various national battlefields, and this was no exception.

We were looking ahead on our planned route, attempting to anticipate where to be for the Labor Day weekend.  What we found is that the combination of that long weekend and Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier Route don't work too well together.  So I found Louisiana DOT's 511 page and took a look at their bicycle maps.  They have the Southern Tier highlighted on the map, as well as a cross-state route in Northern Louisiana, and the same for Western Louisiana.  So we have opted to alter our route, as doing so adds enough extra miles that it will also put us back on schedule for getting across the Rockies and through the deserts of the Southwest.  We'll do the northern Louisiana route to Shreveport.  By the time we get there, we will have decided whether to go due south and pick up our Southern Tier route, or find a more diagonal route to Austin, TX, where we will rejoin the Southern Tier.

Lately, Lana has started "prairie-doggin'," popping up from her den in the van in order to see what is going on topside (the photo above is sort of a semi-prairie dog pose, just propping her head up to keep tabs on us).  We suspect that she would like to be up higher, so that she can see what is going on.  But if we can make that happen it looks like it would take a major reshuffling of the area immediately behind the seats, and we would probably only figure it out through trial and error.  We would also need access to some woodworking tools in order to make the necessary changes...

Days 148 & 149: Meriwether Lewis Campground, TN

We are back on the Natchez Trace, and we have already managed to cover the 34 miles or so that we missed last year (our Great Rivers South route had put us on the Trace south of its northeern terminus).  We are enjoying the lower traffic volumes, usually wider lanes and the generally easier gradients.  An added bonus on Sunday was that there were a lot of locals out on training rides.  But we saw no bicycle tourists and even RVs are fairly scarce at this time of year.

Lots of wild turkeys...

We should have more pleasant temperatures and drier weather for a few days.  Which works well for traveling the Trace, as there are a few very nice campgrounds that are all free, but they are also all primitive.  So cooler nights make it much more pleasant to sleep at night.  At least they allow us to run our generator until 10 pm, if needed.

We are camped at Meriwether Lewis Campground (free, flush toilets, water available), which we had stayed at last year when we came through this area.  The campground is nearly empty, with just two other RVs and the host.  The campground host, Ian, is one of the more interesting and friendly hosts that we have encountered in the past year. 

We had been wondering if the flooding in Louisiana would force us to change our travel plans, but it appears our route is a bit north and/or west of the most impacted areas.  So we'll find our own route from Natchez and then south the 50 or 60 miles through Louisiana to where we can pick up the Southern Tier route.

We were also relieved to find out yesterday that Larry's Bicycles had sent our missing chainring via 2 Day Priority Mail.  It is now waiting for us in Collinwood, TN, where we will pick it up tomorrow.

We spent Monday doing some chores.  I had reviewed the owner's manual and realized that, with all the towing that we have been doing, it was time to get the transmission fluid changed.  While we were waiting for that to be done, we got caught up on laundry, since we aren't too likely to find a convenient laundromat in the next couple of days.

Lana had a blast today, as there is a creek just below our campground.  It was nice and shallow - perfect for her favorite game of playing fetch in the water.  But there were some deeper spots, so I started tossing the ball in a shallow area that she needed to swim to.  As a result, she has learned to launch herself into the water.  She loved it!  Here she is in action...

Check out that bow wave!

And again...

Day 147: Poole Knobs Campground, TN

With weather expected to move in this afternoon, we decided that I would ride a ways down the road before heading to Hendersonville to pick up Alea's bike at Biker's Choice.  I was spitting rain now and again, but generally pretty pleasant.  So I rode about 13 miles, then we piled in the van and doubled back toward the bike shop.  We did some shopping along the way, since we knew that we would be at the bike shop before the repairs would be complete.

We didn't have to wait long before the bike was ready, so we got going again pretty quickly.  But first we bought a couple of small top tube bags, so that I don't have to stuff my jersey so full of stuff, and so that Alea would have a more convenient place to store her wallet and phone.  

The one thing that I added to mine was a small piece of The Absorber, a synthetic chamois cloth.  When I'm riding in the rain, once I'm fully soaked it is about impossible to use my cell phone.  My wet hands get the screen wet, and if I try to wipe it off on my clothes it gets even worse.  So this way I can squeegee off the phone and my hands well enough to use the phone, and it is easy enough to wring out the chamois if it gets too wet.

Of course I hadn't done that before getting back on the road.  The frequency and intensity of rain showers increased slowly over the remaining 28 miles to our stopping point.  At one point, I had just stopped at the van for some Gatorade and had headed back out.  Then a microburst storm came through, dumping a lot of rain and some strong, gusty winds.  Alea had just passed me and had room to pull over on the shoulder, but she kept going.  Of course within a minute or two I could feel the water fill up my shoes, to the point where it started draining out by my ankles.  There was so much water on the road it was tough to know for sure where the pavement was, excepts for the ripples that were made as it flowed over the rumble strips.

Finally I came to where Alea had belatedly decided to pull over to wait for me.  I was completely soaked, but it was still better to wait out the remainder of the storm in the cab of the van than to keep slogging through the rain and wind.

So we are camped at Poole Knobs Campground, and we were lucky enough to camp for free tonight.  Someone had paid for our site for the night, but had to leave early for some reason.  Before leaving, they asked the volunteers in the registration hut to give it to someone that was only looking to stay one night.  That happened to be us.  So we have power, water and showers for free.  

We decided to use our windfall savings to order pizza.  Of course the fact that we are under a severe weather warning also had a lot to do with that.  It certainly wasn't turning out to be a night to be cooking outside.  

But luck wasn't with us.  The pizza driver was unable to follow the three big, brown signs between here and the highway that point to our campground.  So he got lost.  And he called three times to try to get himself sorted out.  But English was not his language of choice, so we couldn't help him understand where he went wrong.  And calling his boss at Roma Pizza and Pasta wasn't any help.  Of course the first thing we saw when we got to the campground was a Papa John's driver (it is located within a half mile of Roma) delivering a pizza here, so why was it so hard to find a public campground (hell, we've never been here before and it certainly wasn't any mystery to us)?  We'll never know what the malfunction was.  The owner told the driver to return to the barn to deliver the other pizzas that were stacking up, and we drove out to Pizza Hut to get a pizza to go...

Day 146: Bledsoe Creek State Park, TN

When our package finally arrived in Scottsville, we discovered that they didn't ship my 34 tooth chainring, which is the one I am really desperate for - I only got the 50 tooth one.  So I called Larry's Bicycles and Vacuums in Levittown, PA and they are supposed to send the small chainring to me in Collinswood, TN, where we also have replacement bank checks waiting for us.  But here it is, the end of business on Friday, and I haven't received any notice that they had purchased the postage for shipping the other chainring, let alone a notice that the post office had picked it up.  So unless they jet freight it to us, it is looking like we could be circling around Collinswood for days, waiting for the chainring to find its way to us.  It is starting to look as though they don't have one in stock.

Alea had a fairly easy ride of 41 miles.  The shoulder sort of came and went in Kentucky, but as soon as we hit Tennessee she had a wide shoulder and most of it had bike route signage.  It was cloudy at first, then it started sprinkling off and on, then the last five miles was in a fairly steady rain.  But she got off the road just a bit after noon.

We are camped at Bledsoe Creek State Park ($26.85, power, water and adjustable, air conditioned showers).  We had wanted to reserve a campsite, but couldn't due to the uncertainty of when the chainrings would arrive, so we crossed our fingers and hoped that there would be a spot for us on a Friday night, and we lucked out (no doubt in large part due to the wet weather).  If we had needed to stay at one of the big private campgrounds, they run $50-$65 per night!

We took Alea's bike about 20 west of here to a bike shop in Hendersonville.  She had complained this morning about not being able to shift to and from her small chainring.  I managed to get it to where, with some effort, it would work well enough for her ride today.  She was wanting to keep riding for a few days with it the way it is, but I suspected it could be a shift cable that had become frayed.  We'll be on the Natchez Trace in a couple of days, and the ability to find a decent bike shop would be a lot harder there.  So it was best to deal with it as soon as possible.  There is some sort of big event going on near here tomorrow, but we lucked out and found a bike shop that will try to get us back on the road early tomorrow morning.  We are hoping that we can find enough time in between rain showers and picking up her bike to get to our next destination, which is a bit more than 40 miles south of here.  That will set us up for getting clear of Nashville before the Monday commute.

Days 141 to 145: Barren River Lake, KY

We used our first full day at Tailwater Campground (Monday, the 15th) to take care of chores.  The gas mileage for our van has been dropping lately, so we used our layover to have the oil changed in Bowling Green.  Sure enough, it went up dramatically with the new oil.  That suggests that we will probably plan on changing oil about every 5,000 miles from here on out.

We have enjoyed the campground, as we are camped beside the boat ramp and next to a closed section of the campground.  The ramp makes it possible for Lana to cool off by playing in the water, and with access to the closed campground she gets to walk off-lead and we can play ball with her there (at those times when it is cooler out).  So, if it weren't for the complete lack of cell coverage here, this has been a great place for us to hang out while we wait for my replacement chainrings.

One day we decided to explore the campground nature trail, thinking that after 240 Boy Scouts had camped here last week that it would have been cleared of any spider webs.  Wrong.  Luckily Alea had her cane with her, so she blazed the trail for Lana and me.

She's got moves like Obi-Wan Kenobi!

While driving around doing errands I also took the opportunity to see where my 4th great grandfather (Simon Williams) had lived from about 1805 to 1815, about midway between Allen Springs and Halfway, KY.  There is a pretty good chance that the land to the east of his property (which currently has a corn crop growing on it) was cleared by him and his sons a couple hundred years ago.  My speculation is that the 75 acres that he owned was in exchange for their labor on that and an adjoining property, as he likewise received property from his neighbor on the opposite side, which was owned by Brooks Hall Davis.  And it was the proceeds from selling the 75 acres that he owned in Kentucky that led to him and his children to eventually own about 800 acres of land in and around Posey County, Indiana.

A map I created of the metes and bounds property boundaries near Allen Springs, KY circa 1815.

Two views of the property that Simon Williams had owned back in 1815.

The chainrings are finally scheduled to arrive on Friday (tomorrow), but we have no idea if that will be in the morning or in the afternoon.  They showed up in Nashville at 1 am this morning, but they haven't budged since then.  We suspect it will likely start moving again this evening.  Then it is a matter of how long it takes the post office in Scottsville to get everything processed...

So we hope to be rolling again tomorrow, but that will depend somewhat upon the weather.  The last two days there have been showers throughout the day, and this morning there was a period of a few hours with non-stop, heavy rain.  So we may wait the rain out at our current campground, but we're getting a touch of cabin fever, so we would prefer to head south.  We're hoping to ride through Nashville this weekend, so that we avoid commute traffic.

Days 138 to 140: Bardstown - Nolin River Lake - Barren River Lake, KY

We stayed an extra day at Bardstown, taking the opportunity to get caught up on chores (laundry, fixing the slide on Alea's screen door, finding the Kentucky pin for our drawer pedestal and organizing my research from the past couple of months).

Lana knows how to have fun in the heat!

On Friday morning we jumped on the freeway and headed back to Sonora, where we had been three days earlier.  This is the point where we start heading for the Deep South.  We aren't relishing the thought of even more heat and humidity than we experienced in Missouri last month, but, as we always say, "it is what it is."  We will deal with it, somehow.  Heat, humidity and The South would seem to be synonyms.  At least in August.  We are here easily at least a month too early, probably two months.

Alea rode 30 miles to Nolin River Lake, where we camped at Wax Campground ($23, power, water and adjustable showers).  We booked for two nights so that we wouldn't be trying to squeeze in at another campground on Saturday night.  Plus we've figured out that we are probably about two weeks ahead of schedule for reaching El Paso, TX by mid October.  So it is once again time to put the brakes on in order to soak up some of that extra time.

We don't just see corn and soybeans - sometimes we see tobacco!

We used some of our time off to take stock of what we were carrying in the van, thinking that after a year of traveling we could probably get rid of some stuff.  We did.  And as a result we've got our drawer pedestal organized a bit better.

We were in a cell reception dead zone the last two nights - no signal at all for either AT&T or Republic.  So we had to wait until we were well down the road before we could update the blog.

This morning I rode 53 miles to Barren River Lake, KY, where we are camped at Tailwater Campground ($20, power, water and adjustable showers).  My shifting was pretty much a mess the whole way, so it appears my troubles are due to warn front chainrings, and not a maladjusted rear derailleur.  

We could be stuck here for a while.  We've ordered some replacement chainrings, but the fastest delivery option gives a delivery range between Tuesday and Friday.  We're hoping it will be here by Wednesday at the latest.  But this isn't the worst place we could have picked to sit and twiddle our thumbs.  About 11 miles from here (as the crow flies), my third great grandparents were married on 16 Jan 1810.  They were Elder Lewis and Ellender (Cater) Williams.  A short time later, they moved to Indiana Territory, where the Williams clan settled in the vicinity of Cynthiana.  So having time off here will give us time to see where Lewis' father had owned property before moving farther west.  And perhaps I can poke around to see if there is a local historical society that might have information about some of the people that settled near him (many of whom also went to Indiana).

Day 137: The Bourbon Capital of the World

There are many, many reasons why we enjoy our particular style of bicycle touring, and we've mentioned a lot of those in the blog over the past year.  The latest 'blessing' has to do with riding in humid weather.  When it is really humid, it doesn't take long for everything that you are wearing to be soaked in sweat.  And after a while, all the sweat beading up on your arms finds its way down to the handlebars, where it makes them pretty slippery and nasty.  You can't wipe your wet hands off on your clothes, because they are as wet as you are.  So when Alea stops to provide me with cool refreshments and some additional calories, I take the time to wipe off my hands and arms, and wipe off the handlebars so that they will be dry for another 5 miles down the road.  It's a little thing, but it makes the inhospitable weather a bit more tolerable.

It has been a good 50 mile day.  We met our first cyclist on the road in over a month (we were in Ohio and headed west at that time).  His name is Harry, and he hit the road two months ago in Oregon and is headed to Charlottesville, NC, where he will end his trek and take a train back to Brooklyn.  We offered to let him share a campsite with us, and he seemed interested in the idea.  But Adventure Cycling has updated their maps since we purchased ours, and the route on his map (and the US Bicycle Route 76 signs on the route) bypasses Bardstown, KY, where we have stopped for the night.  So we suspect he stayed on USBR 76 and ended up farther down the road.

Bardstown is the self-proclaimed Bourbon Capital of the World (I suspect they are correct), and the HUGE Heaven Hills Distillery that we passed on the way into town is one of several in the area (and yes, Ann, there are also wineries here, plus a brewery or two).

Our first order of business here was to find a bike shop.  But when we Googled for one, the nearest one was in Elizabethtown, near where we had stayed last night.  We found a couple of listings for some bike stores in the region that had closed, and when we got to Bullmoose Brothers Bicycles in Elizabethtown we found that he, too, was going out of business.  We asked why the rash of bicycle shops closing and he replied "Walmart and Amazon.com."  That's not surprising, but it doesn't bode well for touring cyclists if bicycle repairs become increasingly hard to come by.  If so, we need to jump into the Way Back Machine to 1985, where 5 speed freewheels and inexpensive, one-size-fits-all chains were the norm.  At least those bikes could be maintained by just about anyone - their design and function was pretty much self-evident.

Anyway, the shop owner was kind enough to at least see if our issues were simply a matter of making a quick adjustment, or if either was indicative of excessive wear on our front chainrings or some other more involved issue.  Fortunately for us, the former was the case, and we were back on the road soon enough and our wallet was only $20 lighter.  It turns out that my problem was being caused in part because of my off-road bushwhacking in north central Illinois - some grass and debris had gotten wedged under the bottom bracket and was interfering with my shift cable.  

We are camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park ($22, power, water and adjustable showers) in Bardstown, KY.  While we have water to the site, it is about three times farther away than our water hose will reach, so it is not the best utility layout here.  But otherwise it is one of the better laid out parks that we've been to recently, though in part that is because there are only about three dozen campsites here.

One aspect of the recent hot, humid weather is that we've gotten more insects bites than we are accustomed to, though most don't leave much of a mark (if any).  The exception is that I managed to get somewhere and picked up a chigger.  And where you have one chigger bite you will soon have several.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but once we knew what we were dealing with it was simply a matter of painting over the bites with clear nail polish.  Like redbugs, they burrow into your skin and reproduce, with each new batch branching out and finding a new place to burrow in and infest.  The nail polish basically suffocates them and stops the cycle.

And finally, check out his old Campy chainring that we saw at Bullmoose Brothers.  The holes are there to reduce the weight, but they still added the nice multicolor club design.  Quite a work of art!

Day 136: Glendale, KY

The heat and humidity is back.  Or at least the humidity is back, up around 75% or better.  Alea's 48 miles were predominantly uphill, with one particularly steep climb out of the Rough River Valley.  We were grateful to be passing through Rough River early in the week, as it is virtually certain that riding through the area on a Friday would have been very challenging.  The area has hundreds of campsites, several marinas and narrow roads with no shoulders.

We get all shiny on days like this!

But we are back on mostly rural roads, cutting wide arcs to avoid the bigger cities in the area.  Alea's ride ended at Sonora, KY, just past where we will eventually head south past Mammoth Cave, Nashville and on to the Natchez Trace.

We camped for the night at Glendale Campground ($28, power, water and adjustable showers).  Aside from having the sites crammed way too close together, it was a decent private campground.  The bathrooms had AC, though it was set at a fairly high temperature.

Day 135: Cave Creek, KY

Due to a dearth of available camping options, we elected to pile on the miles, riding 83 miles to the area around Rough River Reservoir.  I took the first shift, covering 33 miles, Alea did the next 31 and I took over for the final 19 miles.  It was 90 degrees at the end of the ride, but the humidity has been much more reasonable the past few days.

It was again a day of pleasant rural vistas and generally low traffic volumes.  A small highlight was stopping in Glenville, KY at the intersections of Highways 81 & 140 for a homemade 20 oz strawberry-banana milkshake - for $3!  I'm not too sure I wasn't paying close to that amount back in 1985.

So far, our route through Kentucky has been very easy to follow.  Most of the US Bicycle Route 76 signs are in place, and there aren't all that many times that we need to change highways.  So it has been low stress and pretty much trouble free riding.  There have been plenty of low to medium rollers, and only a few longer grades, but nothing like what we've encountered in New England and the Ozarks.

We arrived at Cave Creek Campground around mid-afternoon, only to find at the entry booth that the campground was closed Monday through Wednesday.  We drove in and took a look around, and discovered that two campsites were occupied, but there was no facility for self-paying.  Plus there was a host, but they weren't home.  We finally figured out that we could go online to book a campsite ($22, power, water and showers with adjustable water temperature).  Since this is a Corps of Engineers campsite, it can be booked at recreation.gov, so there is no added reservation fee.

Day 134: Moffitt Lake, KY

We were fortunate to have a bit of a break in the weather yesterday, with much less humidity and it was near noon before the temperature climbed into the eighties.  We opted to take advantage by celebrating my birthday a day early at Tequilas Mexican Restaurant in Carmi, as it was finally cool enough that we could leave Lana in the van without fear that she would get overheated.

Today I am one year closer to Medicare and the first trickle of our retirement income!  This was my first Facebook birthday, so thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today!

We drove back down to Cave-In-Rock, IL early this morning, returning to where we had left our route on Wednesday.  And after a short, free ferry ride we were across the Ohio River and once again in Kentucky.  This was the same spot where we crossed the Ohio last year, but instead of heading west and south, we are headed more or less due east.

Being Sunday, the roads had very little traffic, but it's rural enough here that I doubt if there is any such thing as rush hour in most of the little towns we passed through today.  There are plenty of hills (often steep) scattered along the route, though it doesn't seem any are more more than a couple hundred feet of vertical gain.  

Alea rode a total of 43 miles to our stopping point in Dixon, KY.  The one item of interest today, was that she was screaming down a descent when a deer popped out from a cornfield and dashed across the road just a few feet in front of her!  So we are thankful she was able to avoid a collision on an otherwise uneventful day.

Campgrounds are few and far between along most of this stretch of US Bicycle Route 76, AKA the Trans America Trail.  For the next few days, the only available facilities near the Trail are a few small towns offer camping in their city parks (most are more like a town commons), but rarely are there bathroom facilities, and often there is no water.  And where there are toilets, they are often only available from 9 am to 5 pm.  So they aren't much of an option for us.

So we've opted to travel off route a ways, where we are staying at the campground at Moffitt Lake Recreation Area ($22, power, water and showers [with adjustable temperature!]), which is just south of Morganfield, KY.   It is a great little park, set on a small reservoir.  There are a lot of folks here who seem to stay for weeks or more at a time, despite there not being sewer hookups.  It seems a fair number of them are fishermen, and no doubt there are other recreation opportunities nearby in Morganfield.

Someone is planning on staying a while, if they are
dumping their blackwater into a 55 gallon drum!

Days 130-133: The Dog Days of Summer

On Wednesday I rode 46 miles to Cave-in-Rock, IL, getting a flat tire about 4 miles short of town.  I got that fixed and rolled into town just as the off and on drizzle that I had experienced all morning turned to all out rain.  So we loaded up the bike and made a side trip to Carmi, IL (earlier in the week we had tried to find a bicycle route to Carmi, but the DOT maps didn't show any options that weren't on busy roads with no or little shoulders).  We had some mail waiting there and I planned to do a little family history research in our spare time.

Off and on rain...

...and the real deal.

We are at the city campground at Burrell Park ($20, full hookups, showers, all the wood you can burn).  We loved this park when we camped here last fall, with the free wood and warm showers (it was only $15 per night then).  But you can't control the temperature on the showers, so the hot showers aren't nearly as welcome in this heat.  But it is a nice campground, and well shaded, so it provides some relief from the weather.

Burrell Park.

We've used our time here to re-evaluate our plans for the remainder of the summer.  It seems as though we've been ahead of our intended schedule since Day 1 this year.  And lingering in the heat and humidity that we've been experiencing isn't all that appealing to us.  Our instinct is to pile on the miles and get out of this weather, but that is not an option on our planned route:  if we get far enough down the road to escape the humidity, we will be going through some very hot desert environments well before they cool down to reasonable levels.

So we spent a fair amount of time considering changing our route.  One option would have been to drive back to Missouri and head west from Jefferson City or Rolla with the intent of getting to the Rockies and the cooler temperatures at higher elevations (not to mention the more arid environment).  If we did that, we would want to swing through Boise to see friends and get caught back up on doctor visits, etc.  But that is far enough that it could put us in the mountains in mid-October, when early snow is a real possibility.  It also would mean that we would need to be in a big hurry to head south for the winter.

We looked at some other options, but they would have us hovering some place near the Rockies while we waited for the deserts of the Southwest to cool down.  And they would completely bypass Texas.

So our hope now is to stick to our planned route and to keep our pace slow enough that we reach El Paso, TX just before mid-October.  From there our forty mile per day pace would put us in San Diego about three weeks later (longer if we linger anywhere for a while, though we are concerned about the snowbirds filling up all the campgrounds at that time of year).

With our best option appearing to be soldiering on, we went into survival mode; as in trying to find a way to survive the heat and humidity, which will likely only get worse as we start heading toward the Gulf Coast in a week or so.  So we bought ourselves a high-volume 20" garage fan, something we had seen a lot of people using while we were camping in Missouri.  In addition to providing us with a much needed breeze, it works great at blowing most of the bugs away.  Lana wasn't too sure of it at first, but now she hogs a spot front and center.

Our new high volume garage fan.

Prior to that, we had spent increasingly more time in our cabin in front of the AC.  And it seems one result of running the AC so much has been that there may be a colony of mold spores trying to get established in there.  We called Camp Inn for some advice, and were told that our best bet would be to spray a lot of mold/mildew spray into the front of the AC, hoping to kill off as much of the mold as possible.  Otherwise, the only option would be to take the AC out, take it apart, scrub everything down, dry it out real good and then put everything back together.  So we've completed Option A and will monitor for signs of further mold development every now and again while we are traveling in this humid environment.  We also plan to run the AC fan on high when we aren't inside the cabin, so that it can help to dry out the interior of the AC.

Mold was trying to colonize our new air conditioner diffuser.

It has also been a time to get caught up on some chores.  One of those was replacing a damaged zipper slide on the screen door on my side of the camper.  A month or more ago we got a great tip on how to fix a zipper that no longer is able to pull the two sides of the zipper together.  The trick is to [gently] squeeze both sides of the zipper slide that straddle the zipper teeth.  The "gently" part was missing from the original instructions and I effectively destroyed one slide.  The man who makes those doors, Kevin Wilson, was kind enough to send me some free replacement slides.  Replacing mine was a simple matter of taking apart the stitching on a piece of vinyl reinforcement, slipping off the damaged slide, putting on the new slide and sewing it all back shut again.  So our screen doors once again work like new.

And we had some good news the other day.  We contacted the factory about the problem we were having with our water pump, and they suggested to rap on the water pump with a screwdriver handle before ordering a new pump.  And sure enough, that did it.  Our problem was caused by a stuck pressure valve and rapping on the pump housing got it unstuck.  That saved us about $70 in parts and untold frustration removing and replacing the pump.

Our drive to Carmi on Wednesday was in some fairly heavy rain, so it was no surprise to learn that, once again, some water had gotten in through the condensation drains of the camper's streetside door window.  We've worked with the factory on this issue for a while now, and as a result the situation has improved considerably from when we first became aware of it.  My suspicion is that what got in is water thrown up from passing vehicles combined with the slipstream created by our particular vehicle.  We were able to quickly mop up the water that got inside the cabin, so it was not a big deal.

Anyway, when Alea went into town to do laundry the other day I took it upon myself to remove the bed from the cabin, so that I could clean the cabin floor and make certain that we had no other water issues.  In doing so I found the front streetside corner of the cabin floor to be damp - much too damp to be explained by the recent rain storm.  Upon inspecting outside, I found the bungee that secures our Alcan cover (a vinyl cover that protects the camper's aluminum skin from rock dings) was sopping wet.  And a large area of the cabin floor had very significant condensation and was very damp.  I also found where the Alcan cover had prevented one of the drains of the front pass-thru from draining properly, causing a minor amount of wood staining there.

Excessive moisture in an area under our Alcan cover.

Another Camp Inn owner, Jenn Stuart, had been warning us of a similar issue that she had with 2012 camper.  In her case, it got bad enough that it was necessary to have the factory rebuild that corner of her camper.

Ours was no way near that far gone, so we put our ceramic heater to work inside to dry things out, and stuffed wads of paper towels under the Alcan cover to wick away as much moisture from the bottom of the floor as possible.  That seems to have worked very well.  

It appears that our issue is being caused by excessive exterior condensation on the camper's skin, which is the result of our need to run the air conditioner so much in this high humidity.  At present the camper is tilted slightly to the streetside and slightly nose down, so a lot of that condensation eventually finds its way to the front streetside corner, where it is held against the cabin floor by the Alcan cover.  My solution was to buy some extruded aluminum U-channel to keep the Alcan cover away from the cabin floor, thus allowing things to drain properly.

The new U-channel assures that the Alcan cover stays away from the bottom of the cabin floor.

The U-channel with the Alcan cover in place.

One thing that I had hoped to do while here in Carmi was to contact one or more third cousins from my Malone line: folks who shared direct ancestry from Absalom Malone, the first blacksmith of Crossville, IL.  In particular, I was hoping to contact Ryan Bingman, a descendant of Annie Fannie (Malone) Higginson Smith, who was Abs' only daughter to survive to adulthood.  The intent was to find someone to help shake the family tree, in the hope that someone in the family has a picture of Abs and/or any of his children.  Unfortunately, Ryan's mother, Lilleen (McElroy) Bingman, died this past Wednesday and the service was held on Friday.  So it was terrible timing for trying to connect with him.

But, out of the blue, I received a call from a slightly more distant Malone cousin, James Lumpkins (he is a third cousin, once removed).  Our common ancestor was Abs' father, James Malone, Senior.  James Lumpkins descends from Abs' youngest brother, Elijah.  I returned his call and we tried having a conversation, but the poor cell reception here made that next to impossible.  But it sounds as though he may have been researching the family history well before I started, and he may have known a man by the name of Bill Hunter, who was someone who had attempted a Malone family history about 8 or 10 years before I came along.  I'll call him again later, once we are camped somewhere with better cell reception.