55.3 mi / 12.6 mph / 878 ft. climbing
Home: Percy Quin State Park

It’s merely a coincidence that we resumed our movement on the 3.5 year anniversary of the start of our nomadacy. The real reason was because someone else had booked our AirBNB for two nights in this otherwise-empty two months span, so that’s what fixed the end of our 3 weeks of rest. But once we found out how nice the place was, and absent any precise plans, we had considered asking our host if that 2-night interloper was real (or, like just a relative or something). “Kick them out, so we can stay another week, it’ll save you two cleanings!” Of course we never said anything, but this morning our host messaged and said the guest had cancelled! I told Rett, we don’t have anything booked, maybe we should stay! But we were already 60% through our packing process, and she was ready to roll.

So we rolled into a big day, most notably one with hills! Though those didn’t really come until the end. Most of the day was on US-51, which parallels the Amtrak rail line to Chicago, thus passing through a lot of small towns, but not carrying a ton of traffic since I-55 mirrors it a mile or two to the west. All the way through Louisiana it had a wide shoulder, though I wouldn’t call it a “nice shoulder”, since it was scattered with an unhealthy amount of debris. When a flashing-light police car blasted past, we moved over to the right edge, and suddenly Rett had a clicking from her front wheel. We made it to Piggly Wiggly a mile ahead, and discovered a nail completely buried in her tire, making both an entry and exit wound in the tube. The air finally came wooshing out when we extracted it.

After that we were able to ride several miles on the old highway, for some near-ideal country road riding. It’s not just the calendar marking the arrival of spring. It was palpable everywhere today, from the blooming flowers, to the soft green buds on the gray trees, and the subconsciously-detected sun angle lighting the bright blue sky in a way that doesn’t happen any other time of year. After being in never-winter Florida and along the Gulf Coast for so long, this seasonal rotation took me completely by surprise. It turns out we haven’t really ridden into a proper “spring” in the last three years (Baja and New Zealand don’t really have winters to create the contrast, and Seattle barely does but we were immobile for that one). I hadn’t realized how much I missed it! Unfortunately the spring pollen was also drying out Rett’s eyes, so it’s not all bunnies and tulips.

We passed within spitting distance of the house that Britney Spears grew up in (and it sounds like her mom still lives in a house nearby that Britney bought for her). Anyone can read in her bio that she comes from some nowhere-place in Louisiana, but riding your bicycle through the region is the best way to make that seem completely unbelievable. Even with her as an example, I can’t imagine many girls from this poor culturally-insignificant backwater actually believe they could follow in her footsteps; just as an illustration, we were chased by a near-record number of unleashed dogs today. Then again, I guess Elvis came from not too far away…

Soon after we crossed the Mississippi border, the shoulder on US-51 disappeared. I couldn’t really fault the state since the traffic volume wasn’t high enough to make it worthwhile, but I do fault them for its cracked and chip sealed surface. Relearning how to do hills again will take some time. We never exceeded 400 feet, or a 5% grade, but the “up” part of the frequent ups-and-downs definitely went slower than they used to.

Percy Quin State Park has an RV section (that I knew was fully booked) and a “primitive” section. The latter is nearly 2 miles further into the park than the former (including more hills), and with 54 miles already leaving Rett tuckered, I inquired about the location of their “premium primitive” sites, which are too new to have made it onto their online maps. My hunch was correct, and they’re in the RV area! They cost $8 more, but when I learned that the regular primitive area doesn’t have showers, that sealed it. It was still tough to find our way through the loops, and then to finding which of the 5 poorly-labeled tent platforms was ours, but it quickly became clear that it was an excellent choice.

Sitting on a hillside sloping down to the lake, it reminded us both of a hike-in campground we walked along during a hike up Baker Lake in the shadow of Mount Baker in Washington. Or like a “Dirty Dancing” lake in the Catskills, the last place we were when we’d seen actual topography. In short, completely unlike anywhere we’ve been recently.  These “premium” sites were actually built by an apparently-now-defunct commercial company, Tentrr, that would put big glamping tents in state parks. They must have taken their canvas tents for liquidation, but left the platforms, Adirondack chairs, and other furniture behind. It’s a pain to stake out the tent on the platform (our beloved Mount Desert Campground in Maine gives you a hammer and nails, here I bike-lock hammered our skinny tent stakes to wedge them in the gaps between the boards), but something about the tent on the platform makes it look and feel glamping-fancy, even if it’s just our normal tent.