Our Final Statistics and Amazing Facts about the trip

Best Drivers: Iowa
Worst Drivers: Missouri (Louisiana is a close 2nd)
Best Roads: Mississippi
Worst Roads: Louisiana (Iowa was a close 2nd)
Nicest Staff: Rivals Bar (Odie) in Greenville
State with the Nicest People: Iowa
Best Camping location: Cascade Iowa, City Park
Worst Camping location: Meeham Shelby State Park. Dirty bathrooms, kinda pricey, hot sticky night.
Best Sandwhich: ??? Grinder in Fruitland
Second Best Sandwhich: ???? Pig out Pork BBQ

I updated day 6 and 7 of the MRT trip. Pictures and GPS files are now included.

I want to thank everyone who supported and followed along with us on our trip. It was great hearing from you.

I also want to thank all of the great people we met along the trip.

Several people have asked me to post a final post which has some final statistics and summarized our highest and lowest points in the trip. I will do that soon.

I am also adding pictures to the days that we were missing, and adding the google earth links.

Also, Chuck is working on making a google earth file of the entire trip.

Thanks!

We Made It!!!!

We left the hotel after the best hotel breakfast yet! Everything was fresh and great! Thanks Best Western. Our rooms were already booked in New Orleans, though they were a bit difficult to find. Apparently there are 38k Lutheran youth in town for a community volunteer cleanup.

For the first dozen miles or so, we rode along the river in medium traffic. There were a lot of chemical factories and shipping businesses, but we left late so we could miss the morning rush........thus we were biking at lunch time. Whoops.

We woke up early because we have a long day ahead of us. We were not able to make much for progress yesterday, so we must get some miles behind us today. We also wanted to beat some of the rain headed our way. We had a GREAT breakfast at the Best Western in Plaquemine and then quickly packed and headed out on the roads. Traffic is starting to get much heavier as we get closer to New Orleans.

We slept in after the long day yesterday of bad roads, and a ridiculous number of flat tires.

Katie spent a little time playing with the ducks in the water under the cabin. We made it about a block before we realized my tire was not really fixed, and there we sat on the side of the road changing my tube again!

We woke up (slowly) and started to head south on highway 15. This was a stretch of nearly 50 miles of nothingness. A levee along the road was all we saw, even though a beautiful and huge nature preserve was on the other side. Too bad the road wasn't on top of the levee. The road was in horrible shape, and the headwind was really dragging us down. We slowly dodged potholes at 8mph. I can't say it looked like anyone was having much fun.

We woke up excited for our first B&B that actually included both B's. We were all very disappointed to discover that breakfast consisted of cold cereal. What a ripoff. I cannot recommend the Bernheimer house, considering their pricing methods and lack of breakfast. Super 8 had far nicer breakfasts.

Jumping on the Natchez Trace Parkway, we covered our first 20 miles quickly. The Trace is sure a nice smooth ride. The hills are long but not very steep so the mile markers flew past. The temps were in the 70s, which is amazing for this time of year. Awesome!

At our first break, we all quickly took to our normal duties. Roger stood around smiling while the rest of us veg'ed.

After such a long day yesterday, we slept in until 7:00, had breakfast at the Quality Inn in Vicksburg, and headed out. We called ahead and made a reservation at a Bed and Breakfast in Port Gibson. It was going to be a little expensive, but we would only need one room, and there was not a lot of choices in the area. The other hotel we called did not designate smoking versus non-smoking rooms, so we had to skip them.

Here is a picture Chris took. He wanted to know what it looked like to have sunblock put on.

Pictures to be posted later..........

We slept in until 7 and had a decent breakfast at the hotel. We landed up getting the last 2 rooms that the hotel had, and we were short on beds so Chuck and Taters took the floor. Before leaving we booked a room at a B&B in Port Gibson. I explained to them that we were sight seeing on bicycle, and would not arrive until later. We were told the price and reserved the room.

The MRT route through Vicksburg is confusing and possibly marked wrong. We ended up doing a huge circle....very frustrating.

Fisher Ferry road out of Vicksburg is hilly, no shoulder, and insane traffic. This road should NOT be part of a bike route, it is VERY dangerous. Eventually it does become a nice road however; we enjoyed it after the traffic disappeared.