Day 6 - Grenada, MS - 170.5 miles

Vacations plans and reality sometimes get in each others way.

We were up and on the road about 8:30 Saturday morning heading for Mississippi on our bikes out of Crossett Arkansas. The temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees since leaving Texas and we had near perfect riding conditions on Route 82 with a good wide shoulder and little traffic.

We stopped a couple of times, as the day before we had changed dad's back tire after the second flat, and it was running a little out-of-round. Just as his tire seemed to smooth out, I noticed a couple of hard bumps...my turn to have a flat tire.

Same problem as before, a small of wire from a steel belted radial tire had worked its way through my rear tire into the tube creating a slow leak.

By now we were getting pretty good at changing tires so 15-20 minutes later we were ready to get back on the road. Of course our supply of tubes was shrinking rapidly and dad had suggested it might be a good idea to pick up some CO2 canisters rather than continue to use our pumps.

About 10 miles from camp we found a Wal-Mart and decided to stock up. While we found tires, canisters, and soda, we also found that everything took longer than expected. After calling the RV and discovering they were only a few minutes from the store we did a quick calculation and decided that at our current rate of progress we would get to the campsite about 10 that evening.

That didn't seem like a great idea, so when the RV pulled up we put our bikes back on top of the car and started thinking about plan B.

Plan B turned out to be, skip the original campsite and head to Grenada, MS where we could start riding the Natchez Trace Parkway (http://www.nps.gov/natr/).

Along the way we found a great roadside meat market / bbq restaurant; discovered that Arkansas was much more scenic than I imagined; and that the miles go by much faster in a motorhome!

As the trip continues to unfold it has been really nice that dad is comfortable with a mixture of bike riding with the occasional RV trip between rides. It allows us to avoid some of the more dangerous roads and ensures we will enjoy the sections we have both been looking forward to.

I have been taking pictures but uploading isn't working right now so look for links in a future post.