23.9 mi / 10.5 mph / 1102 ft. climbing
Home: Wall Doxey State Park

Even with five days of hospitality and no bike riding, we still avoided figuring out our next steps until just yesterday. Our original idea when heading toward Chicago had been to cross back and forth over the Mississippi River to “collect” as many states as possible. But a closer study of the maps showed (and Ethan confirmed) that the floodplain roads through Arkansas and the Missouri bootheel would be pretty desolate and boring, and the floodwaters from the 5-day storm threw in enough risk to make that minimal reward a non-starter.

So, we could just stay on the east side of the river and ride up through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. We had been able to use our time in Oxford to get serious preparations underway for South America, but I was still feeling like we might be pressed for time if we spent three-plus weeks riding all the way to Chicago (and who knew if the weather would even be warm enough to allow it?) Amtrak could cut the time by allowing us to hop on at one of three remaining places on the City of New Orleans line that allowed bikes to be loaded: furthest is Champaign-Urbana (it would be nice to see my college campus for the first time in 20 years!), or earlier at Carbondale, IL (it would be nice to go through the Shawnee National Forest, a part of my home state I’ve always heard about but never been to), or even earlier, at nearby Memphis.

Coincidentally, Sophie was leaving for a conference in Memphis this morning, and could just drive us straight there (how? She has a bike rack hitched onto her Subaru, of course!) We could be in Chicago in two days; what could be easier?

But that’s where my dumb psychosis kicks in.

Wouldn’t we be shamed by Nomadic Cycling Council for taking the easy way out, for skipping out on three more states that we could easily explore under our own power? Someone on Bluesky would point out our failure, an entire community on Reddit would begin mocking us, and there might even be a motion to have our Nomadic Cycling licenses revoked.

My rational brain understands that no such councils or judges actually exist, and that they are merely projected avatars of my own internal judgement. But their imagined voices sound so real echoing inside my own head! The reality is that, to the extent anyone judges our path through the world at all, they see even the “easiest” version of our lifestyle as something remarkable. And even if we chose the “hardest” path, there would still be no one to give us an award. But it takes a tremendous amount of conscious effort for me to untwist the thick cables of my expectations and see through to that reality, and the window snaps closed again at the slightest loss of focus. However, in one of those moments of clarity, I accepted that taking the train from Memphis to Chicago made the most sense for us.

Poor Sophie and Ethan had to listen to hours of our agonizing decision-making process, and I feel especially bad that my moment of clarity was enabled by Rett decisively saying “let’s just ride all the way to Chicago”. Finally one of us had the guts to put a stake in the ground, and then I come like a contrary asshole just to yank it back out and put it in the opposite spot?! But it took that stake to get me to truly reckon with the time that such a ride would take, and how much more stressful that would make South America-preparation for me.

Still, as a compromise (with those totally-imaginary judges!! Christ!), we would turn down Sophie’s generous offer of a lift to Memphis, and ride our own asses there over two days. Then at least we could add one more state to our tally (that no one will ever ask to see).

Once all the decisions and prep were out of the way, the ride was fairly straightforward. Well, except there was no grocery store on our route, so I went out on my own in the morning on a 6.5-mile round-trip run to Walmart, where I somehow accumulated 450 feet of climbing before we even started the day’s ride for real! It also gave me a bit of a tour of the Ole Miss campus, something we never quite managed to do otherwise.

Sardis Lake, northwest of Oxford, forms a watery barrier on a direct route to Memphis, so MS-7 is the only option to head northward around its eastern margin. Thankfully the old highway still exists for 20-some miles of the corridor, because the five cumulative miles where we were forced onto the shoulderless and relatively-busy MS-7 were reasonably stressful (but most drivers remained chill). In contrast, the parallel options were glorious, nearly-empty, perfect bike touring roads. An abandoned rail line running along the corridor suggests it would be fairly easy and nearly free to stitch together a cycling route that completely avoids MS-7, though with current cycling levels in the area it’s not surprising that no one has moved on that solution.

Wall Doxey State Park greeted us with elegant CCC-like buildings, and a ranger doing her best to quell my psychosis by acting utterly baffled and amazed when hearing only a short portion of our travels. She also told us the bathroom building in the tent loop was closed for repair, but luckily there were sites available in the RV loop, which was much closer to the park entrance anyway.

By bedtime the temperature had dropped to 44°F, another conspiratorial effort to get me to accept that skipping the ride all the way north to Chicago was actually a good idea.