3 States In One Day

Quiz for the day................What three states did we visit today?  For extra points quiz, which state did we spend the least amount of time in? 

Charleston - Dyersburg  (no hints form me on the states)

I originally was going to title this update..............."no hills and the riding is easy".........but having learned from prior experience it is best to wait until the day is done.  We spent the majority of the day on flat ground, but we did encounter a few hills towards the end of the day and as such the title changed.  We also found a new crop................can you guess..................  The morning found us getting out of town with minimum traffic and we may have had our nicest early morning ride.  There was some nice clouds and David and Rex debated (weather) it was going to rain or not.  (it didn't)  We had flat riding and did not see as much corn as we have seen during the trip to date.  It turned out the reason was that the ground was not ready for planting this spring.  It turns out that a portion of the area we went through was subject to the flooding you all may recall happened the spring.  The area we were in was were they broke the levee to prevent more flooding from impacting the state of .............(not going to tell you).     We had a great crossing of the Mississippi River today.  We crossed at Dorena, which is in the state of (?) and arrived in the Hickman, which is in the state of (?).  The crossing was accomplished by a ferry, which was very cool.  We also had our 3rd flat tire of the trip.  Now everyone has had a flat.   David's flat happened in a nice quiet place and the fixing went well.  During the stop to fix the flat, we talked with some USF&G wardens who gave me the lowdown on ducks, etc.  We continued to make good time but ran into some route problems as we had decided to depart slightly from the MRT.  We lucked out again and made it into Dyersburg without any problems and found our favorite place to stay........Holiday Inn Express.  Just finished dinner at a very interesting dive bar, which Rex finally found a beer to his liking.  All in all a good day.  We are headed into Memphis tomorrow and will be working on our route tonight.



PS - Pictures........looks like we are back in business...........would like to tell you that I figured out the problem on why I could not send them, but somehow the problem has worked itself out.  Anyway, enjoy the pictures...........I hope.

As usual, the facts, and just the facts..........come from David...............

Today's miles:  78
Avg. MPH:  10.9
Total miles:  980.3
Daily avg:  65.3
Technical difficulties:  As Bill said, a flat tire.  A very slow leak.  I kept falling behind and had to work hard to keep up.  I thought I was tired.  Then realized I only had half full tire.  It was a small but hard thorn that just touched the tube.  Hot work on a dry hot road.  980miles, three flats.  Not bad as these things go.