51.1 mi / 11.5 mph / 1713 ft. climbing
Home: Clear Springs Campground

Rett was pretty chilly all night. I’m not sure if elevating the tent on a wooden platform makes it feel colder or warmer vs. putting on the ground as God intended; I suppose it depends if the air temperature is colder than the ground temperature? And since highs have been in the 70s here for weeks, the morning’s 40°F air temperature probably was lower than the ground temperature, and low by any measure! But it was dry, and quiet, so with a little insulation on Rett’s Adirondack chair, we had a beautiful lakeside spot for a sunrise breakfast.

We set off down some country roads, many of which show literally zero “heat” on the cycling heatmaps. I won’t say that we’re the first people to ride bicycles on these roads, but we’re the first to ride them while recording our GPS tracks! I don’t think I’ve ever seen completely-“virgin” roads in the heatmaps before, certainly not on near-ideal cycling roads like this. Mississippi does “top” the list of states in both obesity and poverty, neither of which generates a robust road-cycling culture, but it’s also surprising that no out-of-state bike tourers have stumbled across these bike-touring gems. A search for last night’s campground on crazyguyonabike.com returned no results (among the 16,000 bike-touring journals) though, so it seems we’re genuinely blazing new trails out here.

While we sat in the shade of the Dollar Store eating our lunch, I noticed a strange cloud. Columnar and gray, with a white cap, it stood out in an otherwise near-cloudless sky. The fact that it remained stationary for 30 minutes only added to the oddity, which grew to the point that Rett even commented on it.

Besides clouds, we could also observe the traffic on US-98 (our old friend from the Florida Gulf Coast) while we ate. We would have a choice to do an 11 mile stretch on the 2-lane shoulderless highway, or add two miles on near-empty country roads. Our observation showed that US-98 was near-empty as well, but Rett chose the adventurous route for ultimate peace.

But a mile after we’d turned north, our strange cloud appeared again. And now, viewed across an open pasture, it was clear that it wasn’t a cloud, it was smoke. My first thought was that maybe it was just someone burning some brush on their property. My second thought was “no, that would require a pile of brush an acre wide”. My third thought was “shit, our left turn coming up is sending us straight for it”.

Rett didn’t seem too bothered, so we kept charging ahead, while I scanned the maps to see if the roads might curve around the blaze, or how far we would need to backtrack if they didn’t. It looked like our westward path was going to aim slightly south of the smoke, but we were due make a right turn northward soon. Was that turn far enough ahead that we would pass fire, and it would remain off to our right? Or would it turn us directly into it? It was difficult to guess at the distances, but there was a point where we could see smoke in the trees at ground level about 100 yards away, so it wasn’t far from us!

At our right turn, the tower of smoke seemed to be behind us, so with things looking safe, we made the turn and continued ahead. If there was really a danger, there would be firefighters on the scene, right? I recalled that there had been a Red Flag Warning for fire danger in the region just two days ago, due to the combination of super-low humidity and high winds, so that means the powers that be were at least on the lookout, right? But soon we saw more smoke in the trees ahead, this time right next to the road. And then blazing orange fire! Holy shit, we were riding through a forest fire!

Six-inch flames were slowly advancing through the dry grass right next to the asphalt, but just 10 yards into the trees the wall of flickering orange was six feet high as it burned deeper into the woods. There was a house just on the other side of the road, and there was still no indication that anyone in the entire county cared about this fire burning unchecked through the forest, so maybe it’s “normal” here? That helped tip our balance between fear and curiosity toward the latter, and we stopped to gawk at this thing neither of us had ever seen before.

But after 10 seconds and a couple photos, the flames suddenly exploded, now rising at least 12 feet up the trunks of the trees. “We gotta go!” I yelled to snap Rett out of it, not knowing where other pockets of fire (this definitely wasn’t the only source of the smoke) might be similarly expanding to surround us.

Ahead was blue sky, so after a quarter-mile of racing, we could slow down, but still repeatedly checked over our shoulder to see how we were moving relative to the smoke. We never saw any more flame, and the smoke gradually receded behind us. Though it became positioned between us and the sun, adding a dull orange cast to the midday light.

Later research showed that the Forest Service had conducted a prescribed fire in this area, so maybe it was all under control? Except, that burn was supposed to be three weeks ago, and there were no updates about additional burns since then. And we certainly didn’t see anyone on the scene to monitor/control anything, which is what I would expect for a prescribed burn? So maybe it’s something that was smoldering undetected and just got restarted? I don’t know if my inability to find any reporting about this fire is because it’s nothing to be concerned about, or just because the people who live around here aren’t connected to the internet and don’t seem to much care if their houses get destroyed? But for us it’s certainly not something that will be forgotten soon!

Even before we passed the fire, it was already clear that our choice to take the longer backroad route was the right one, since it was gorgeous and empty. But now that we had made it safely through this completely-unexpected scare, it made the choice look even better! “Go down this road and you might luck into riding past a forest fire” is not advice I would ever give anyone, but just like hiking past grizzlies, it now goes on our unanticipated bucket lists.

The US-98 bridge over the Homochitto River is being replaced, so even when we returned to the highway we needed to cross it and take more back roads to the next bridge (at least I knew this in advance). After the long push from lunch and the little extra heart-rate boost from the fire, Rett needed a break in the shade. I made a point of finding us a gas station to cool off in Meadville before our final push. The shop itself wasn’t any cooler than outside, but their walk-in beer-fridge finished up the job that we started with cold drinks and ice cream consumed at one of their tables inside.

Then we got on a divided-highway section of US-98. It has no shoulders, but it was perhaps the biggest road-size to traffic-volume mismatch we’ve ever seen, so the few cars that passed us all moved easily into the left lane.

Unfortunately as we worked our way up a 200 foot climb, into the sun, with the wind failing to provide any cooling, Rett still overheated. We’d turned down a minor road and found a bit of shade and got her down to the ground. I should have gotten ice from the gas station, but I remembered that we’d bought some frozen food for dinner, so putting those bags on her neck eventually helped to get her hands to stop shaking, but it took at least 10-15 minutes.

Our next problem was deciding how far to go down the National Forest road. The campground only has 22 sites, and if they were all full on this Saturday at 4pm, it would require an extra 1.4 miles (including a big climb) to come back out to a dispersed camping area. So should Rett just wait there, while I went down to check out the campground? On top of the chance of being full, a recent review said that all the workers had been fired due to Elon Musk’s rampaging idiocy through the federal government, leaving only a single volunteer to hold the place together, so I figured there was a chance the bathrooms could be disgustingly unusable, if they were even open.

In the end though, it seemed like getting Rett under a shower was the priority, so we decided to just head down and deal with any consequences. Luckily, I immediately found an excellent site (at least 4 were still open in the one loop we checked), and the bathrooms were open and surprisingly clean (unfortunately the showers were only hot water, but Rett managed ok).

Our site has both water and electric, opens out onto a gorgeous green picnic area, and is perhaps the fanciest National Forest campsite I’ve ever seen. The cheap $20 price for all of that is the only thing that proves it’s actually a National Forest site!