Bugsplat and I set out to join the rest of the West Georgia crew who were already in Memphis for the Southern Cruisers National Rally. We followed the standard route to Memphis and can report that Mississippi is exactly one tank of gas across. If it had been another 200 yards wide we would have been walking. Other than that and one little incident where a woman complimented Bugsplat on his bike, the trip over was uneventful. Somehow “Nice A**” does not seem an appropriate response to “Nice Bike.”  I try to provide adult supervision but sometimes he’s just too quick.

The very first people we met in Memphis were our group out riding a few blocks from the hotel.
We managed to find a parking place at the hotel and wait for them to return.   

 It was good to see everyone and swap stories and view the vendors etc. Our plan was to visit with the gang, do a little touristy stuff then hook up with Kevin and his new bride and go to Illinois. Didn’t work out exactly that way.

Kevin’s new bride had ditched him for a guy she met in a parking lot in Baltimore. This left Kevin stuck with the bridal suite at the hotel until Sunday. Since we didn’t want to interfere with his grief or his attempts to cut unemployment among the working girls along Front St., Bob and I headed for Arkansas and Missouri.

I-40 and I-55 join to cross the river at Memphis. The 10 miles or so on the west side of the river before they split from each other is heavily traveled and in poor repair. Somewhere along this stretch my Drag Specialties tachometer had more bouncing than it could stand and gave up the ghost. This was the only equipment problem any of us had on the journey.

We rode around looking for a place to stay until Kevin could join us. The first place we stopped had no vacancies so we abandoned the expressway and traveled up US 61 along the river searching for the Bates Motel. US 61 also known as the Great River Road parallels the river from St. Louis to New Orleans passing thru river towns that have been bypassed by the 20th and 21st centuries. We finally found a motel with vacancies in Blytheville, AR along the MO border. This was a strange place for me to be because I served as a prisoner of war at the air base there in the last century. The base has long since closed and the town is dramatically different. This was made clear the next morning as Bob and I waited for McDonalds to open for breakfast at the same time all the clubs in town closed and their occupants gathered at an establishment across the street from us and the duck hunters gathered on our side of the street. There were three police cars on hand to maintain some kind of order.

While Kevin dealt with his grief, Bugsplat and I went to MO once and kind of scouted out the boot heel of MO and northeastern AR. We made an agreement with Kevin that he would meet us at 7:23 on Sunday morning to complete our ride. He came tooling up about 6:30 while it was still completely dark. He was still vibrating from the Volkswagen size potholes and from dodging the bird sized mosquitoes.            

With no real goals, just a general idea of what we wanted to see and a full tank of gas, we set out on what was to be a journey thru six states in 13 hours. According to the weather channel our beginning temperature was 56-58*. We rode north about 70-80 miles into MO then hung a right and crossed the river into Illinois. At this point my companions got the idea that I am like a territorial little dog with an overwhelming urge to urinate every time we cross a state line.

Kevin wanted to ride a scenic road that went up the east side of the river thru the Tecumseh National Forest. If you’re from the mid-west you might consider this a scenic road. There were a couple of nice views of the river and almost every county has a public hunting area set aside. We went thru a little hamlet which billed itself as the “Goose Capital of the World”. This upset Bugsplat to no end because there was no sign of any geese or even any goose poop. Anyone who has walked around Lake Carroll knows that where there are any geese at all, there is goose poop. We had to have a meeting and remind him that not only were these folks Yankees and didn’t know any better and also that we were not with the Goose Census Bureau. Couldn’t get him to hush but at least we got out of town without an incident. Who knows, it was Sunday morning – maybe all the geese were worshipping?

We spent a couple of hours wandering around southern IL looking for geese and a scenic view. We stopped for gas in some small place east of the forest and soon met a young attractive woman with a tattoo on her butt. She pulled in beside the air pump and stared speculatively at the air filled donuts supporting her car. She enlisted Bugsplat’s aid for a blow job then took off her top and they disappeared around the other side of her vehicle for several minutes. When Bob was finished with his blow job we found an expressway and headed south into KY. We crossed the Ohio River at Paducah and the Tennessee River about 30 miles south of there. Here we hung a right and went down a road maintained by the National Park Service called the Trace which runs thru the Land Between the Lakes. Bugsplat thought he had tried butter from there but Kevin explained to him that was “Land O Lakes”. This was an interesting little road which had a couple of pyramids and occasional bison and elk, both of which had been re-introduced to the area. This road dumped us out at historic Fort Donelson in TN. This site was the scene of an early Union victory which ensured that KY would stay in the Union and opened up the Tennessee Valley to the Union advance which ultimately split the Confederacy. We were having Yankee weather on this day with the temperature barely making mid 60’s.

Eschewing the easy way home we headed generally southeast thru TN. Now Tennessee is a skinny little state, probably not 125 miles north to south. We used multiple tanks of gas as we wandered on deliciously twisty little lanes mostly numbered 40 something. The best of these was highway 48 which was dozens of miles of 35mph curves strung together. Sometime after stopping at Tice’s Spring where you could get fish bait, a tan, and a hot meal all in the same store, we intercepted The Natchez Trace and turned southwest toward Tupelo.

The Natchez Trace is delightful. It also is maintained by the Park Service and resembles the Blue Ridge Parkway without the vistas. We saw a flock of wild turkeys and just enjoyed the sedate pace southward. There were not many people out – probably because of the unseasonably cool weather. The Trace was built to connect the frontier town of Nashville with the Mississippi port city of Natchez and was important in opening the western portions of our country. We stopped at the Gordon House on the Duck River where I was finally able to shed my coat. This brick home was built on the site in 1817 by Col. Gordon who fought along the frontier and also operated a ferry on the site. Looking down on the river in the dry season from the modern bridge it was difficult to imagine the need for a ferry until I thought of trying to cross it on my bike pulling a trailer.

We continued south another 50 miles or so and it became obvious that darkness was going to catch us if we didn’t come up with a plan. We left the Trace near Florence, AL and headed east looking for a motel with a vacancy and a place to eat and found both in Moulton, AL on Sand Mountain. This day we had seen Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Monday morning found us continuing east at 7:10 AM.  

We entered GA west of Cedartown and blasted down 27 to I-20 where we parted. Natchez Trace would make a nice ride for a long weekend next spring before we go up to Laconia for bike week.