The National Weather Service warned of “hen egg”-sized hail, amongst other severe weather chances (tornadoes, 70mph winds) for early this morning. I heard plenty of thunder in my pre-wakeful state, and some flashes were bright enough to make it through both the curtains and my eyelids, but I never felt the motel start to shake.… Read more…

We left the rainfly off the tent for our second camping night in a row, and suffered no ill-effects. Amazing! Though despite the 62-degree temperature and everything being dry, it still somehow took us nearly three hours to go from alarm to rolling. Traffic was still busy on the causeway road that took us back… Read more…

Eggs, biscuits, gravy, grits, and some sort of meat patty: breakfast at the Quality Inn was good enough that we didn’t even need to fire up the waffle maker to get calories into us. It made the already-good-value $79 motel an even better deal. On our way back to the Natchez Trace, we stopped at… Read more…

Campgrounds without water, electric, or bathrooms don’t exactly draw the party crowds, so the humans at Rocky Springs were plenty quiet. But while we were trying to sleep, some creatures (owls?) were hooting at each other at high volume, and later on a pack of coyotes celebrated a kill. Overall the Trace has felt relatively… Read more…

Following on our unexpected (but entirely necessary) rest day, we were up at 5:15am, to the motel breakfast (which thankfully opened at) 6, and on the road just after 7 (even while repairing Rett’s completely flat front tire which I just discovered this morning!).  The main goal was to beat the day’s heat, and such… Read more…

The temperature only dropped to 62 last night, 22 degrees warmer than yesterday, and warm enough that we kept the rainfly doors open all night. We were up at 7am, and even though we had a shorter day today, the breeze kicking up reminded me that we might have some annoying winds, so I wanted… Read more…