VICKSBURG TO LAKE CHOTARD

April 23 , Thursday
42 miles

Before we started this MRT ride Rusty said to me "Will you wait for me at the top of the hills?" Riding through Vicksburg has had some hills for us to practice this. Not many, but some, and I do.

Riding out on the road in the rural the South smells like Honeysuckle! If civilization is anywhere near the smell is Fried Chicken!!

We've certainly been eating lots of calories! Everything tastes so good! Things I usually don't eat i.e. milkshakes, corn bread and yes, fried chicken!

Part of the ride to Chotard Lake is right up on the Levee. What a gorgeous ride! Green, and peaceful and in sight of the river. On the way we stopped at Eagle Lake convenience market and saw a picture of a huge alligator in the field right across the street from the store. Last year that area was under water. The Chotard area where we are camping tonight was flooded up to the levee road with the water up to the roofs of the houses.
So....last year it was a good thing we stopped our ride at St. Francisville because up this way was flooded and we would have had to turn back. It's a pretty desolate area, a fishing/rec area and it would have been difficult to make arrangements to turn around and head home...well, I guess we could have ridden back.


We camped at Chotard Lake tonight. Chotard Lake is a "slop over" of the Mississippi River. There is water, water everywhere on this ride. and couldn't help notice the difference from our adventure in Deer Lake Park April 17Th. Both were under water last year . Deer Park looked like it barely survived and was about to go down for the third time. This campground is tide, orderly, clean and in good repair. It looks like it didn't skip a beat. But we have to camp out in the middle of an area right in the hot sun. It's in the 80's today. So we waited until cool down towards evening before we set up our tent. We had our first meal with our little camp stove and fuel.

Considering riding solo this year as compared to tandem I've noticed we don't have the synergy riding solo that we did tandem last year. ..drawing on each other"s power both physically and emotionally. It's also not as easy or fun to chat with each other.We are doing less miles with flatter road surfaces and averaging only about 10 mph compared to last years ride we're not being worked as hard. Part of that reason is that the route along the MRT is very desolate and sparsely populated. There just aren't places to stop or even throw down our tent. That's hard to imagine because we were willing and able to do that last year. However we'll be riding along for miles and miles with the levee on one side and the bayou or soggy sloped ground on the other. There will be a campground at forty or fifty miles but nothing in between which means we either stop when reach the campground or keep going to next. We're not into doing 80 or 100 miles a day therefore the shorted days. Hey! We're loving it!