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...