On To New Albany

I can tell we are more north.  It’s getting cooler at nights.  At some point we will no longer be “below the weather” and may have to deal with freezing temperatures and snow again.  From the forecast it looks like that may not happen until we get home on Friday.  We’ll see ... and we hope so.

We drove for a while to warm up the rig and to seek some better cell signal before stopping for showers and to watch yesterday’s sermon.  Somehow, that didn’t happen yesterday with all the moving around and the foodie stuff we did.

We covered 165 miles of the Natchez Trace before branching off towards New Albany.  The Natchez Trace is like a nice Sunday drive: very little traffic and it’s okay to drive slow.  In fact, it’s required.  We passed at least two police cars that had pulled people over, I’m guessing because they were speeding. If you want to go fast, take the Interstate!

New Albany is in the area that was hit hardest by Winter Storm Fern a few weeks ago.  We lived through that same storm when we were camped at Tejas, but it was just an inconvenience for us.  A quarter inch of ice encasing everything, temperatures below freezing for a few days, frozen plumbing for some of us.  But here it was much more severe.  The ice took down trees and power lines and made a huge mess of everything.

This picture came from a local Facebook post from January 27.  Most of the streets are now clear and the evidence of the storm is seen in piles of brush and branches lining the roads.  

When we looked fora place to park overnight, we found that there isn’t a lot available.  After exhausting all the other options, Deb called the local police department and asked them if there was a place we could park.  They told us we could park at the Tanglefoot Trailhead, a large parking lot at the north end of the Tanglefoot bike trail, which also happens to be right next-door to the police department building.

We parked there and took the bikes down the trail for several miles, having to dodge sticks and low hanging branches occasionally.  The big stuff had all been pushed off the trail, so a lot of the initial work is done.  What remains now is individual homes that need clean-up and this is what Samaritan’s Purse is here to do.  We will be volunteering for a day in this effort.

We rode our bikes past the Methodist Church that is the command central for Samaritan’s Purse.  The parking lot is full of large trailers with equipment and supplies, more trailers that house portable restrooms, another trailer with a portable kitchen.  They have a big presence here.  We have to show up at the church at 7:30am tomorrow for our day of volunteering.

Should be an interesting day.

234 miles covered today.