STL2NOLA 07 – Wilson, AR to Memphis, TN – A Picturesque End of the First Week

Mother Nature still had it in for me but I had several things that kept my spirits up on my ride from Wilson, AR to Memphis, TN. First, the forecast was for less-than-brutal headwinds, slower by 5 MPH or more than I had previously battled. Second, my route would eventually turn east, so that the winds would no longer be directly on my nose. Third, I was headed for pancakes! And headed for Memphis and a rest day. But mostly pancakes!

I have words for you, and pictures. So many pictures.

Spending the night at The Louis in Wilson, AR was quite the experience. The hotel was magnificent, on par with anywhere else I have ever been. The service was just as good. Dinner across the square at Cafe Wilson was distinctive and delicious. I had the grilled duck fettuccini with a side salad that included many delectables. This little corner of prosperity in the midst of vast miles of cotton fields, steel mills, and shriveled towns, felt like a tiny Disneyland for grown-ups.

I filled up on as much breakfast as I could at a hotel that does not serve breakfast: yogurt, an apple, and a giant macaroon. Beyond that, I would be depending on the food that I was carrying to get me though to a late lunch. Google Maps said that there were no services for the first 30 miles of the ride. I did pass a very sleepy convenience store about an hour outside of Wilson but, other than that, Google was right.

The Lee Wilson Co. (same Wilson as the Village of Wilson) must be immensely busy at cotton harvest time. Check out the size of this storage barn. It was just one of several. They were surrounded by acres and acres of well organized (and video surveilled) truck parking lots.

The next couple of hours of riding were pretty mundane except I did pass this sign. You may not be able to read it because I took a wide photo so that you could appreciate the neighborhood. The sign says: NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH. Uhhhh… OK. The house on the right looked nice but, watch as I did, I failed to find the rest of the neighborhood.

More riding brought me to two sets of decorative concrete columns. They were next to the road but behind them was nothing but a cotton field. Next to the second set was an historical marker that explained it used to be the site of one of eight prisoner of war camps in Mississippi County, AR for German soldiers during WWII. These POWs worked the fields and some of them returned to Germany after the war to take up agriculture.

I took a shortcut to shave several miles off of the ride. That got me a couple miles of gravel road. Cool. Something different to spice up the day. One truck passed me going the other way. He was so sweet; he slowed way down so as not to kick up a huge dust cloud that I would have had to ride through.

More riding and snacking (tortillas with peanut butter, Jiff smooth, or packets of trail mix) brought me to a bridge. Gotta have a bridge.

You are right. It is not very interesting. But after hours of headwinds and cotton fields, it looked pretty darned good, believe you me.

I soon found myself riding along the railroad tracks watching a machine like nothing I had ever seen before. This is a railroad “tamper” I learned from one of the workers tending it. When I think of “tamping” I think of tamping weed into a bong. (Did I really write that?) It is a gentle small operation. This machine is anything but gentle and small. It is whamming at least eight long steel arms down into the gravel under a railroad tie. It then pinches them together to pack them under the tie, raising and leveling the track.

The railroad had one more bit of entertainment for me before lunch. I rode by Harvard Yard. You may have thought that Hahvahd Yahd is in Bahston but you would be wrong.

And then… finally… after 30 miles of riding… I got a real meal. A wonderful cheese omelet and two of the best blueberry pancakes a hungry bicyclist could ever want at the Waffle & Pancake House in Marion, AR.

Yes, I ate it all. With blueberry syrup.

After lunch, I had only a few more miles of riding south into the wind before turning east toward the Mississippi River and Memphis. For the last mile, dear sweet Mother Nature decided to give me one more F-U. She cranked up the winds higher than I had had all week. A couple of times I was on the edge of dropping down into my lowest climbing gear (19 gear inches, for the bike geeks). But I powered through and made it to this sign.

I think that this sign, just east of the Mississippi River, was the first MRT (Mississippi River Trail) sign that I had seen since entering Arkansas. A mile or so down the road, I actually found a second one. It was pointing me toward a road that I had not planned to ride on but, what the heck, if there is a sign, it must be a real.

It was a nice road. Two lanes. Good pavement. Absolutely zero traffic. And a DEAD END sign. I remember those from the days before it became more politically correct to say NO OUTLET. What solo bicycle tourist would not want to be alone on a road with a DEAD END sign?

I kept riding. There had to be a bike trail at the end of the road, right?

Wrong. The pavement ended. There was unkempt grass. There were tire tracks through the grass.

I kept riding. It had to go somewhere, right?

The grass got less and less kempt. Or would that be more and more unkempt? Anyway, it eventually hooked left. Up a short, steep incline, I found the road that I had originally intended to ride.

That road brought me to the Big River Crossing, a fantastic pedestrian and bicycle trail across the Mississippi River between Memphis, TN and West Memphis, AR.

My only complaint about the beginning is that no one bothered to blow the cut grass of of the pavement. 😛

Climbing up onto the crossing itself, I saw this coolness. Everything was neat and safe. There were benches, picnic tables, shade, and ebikes to rent.

The Big River Crossing is on the north side of the I-55 bridge. Once onto the crossing proper, I got a good view of the Mississippi river, the I-40 bridge, the Memphis pyramid, and the Memphis skyline. The river is so much wider than anywhere I encountered it on my ride north along the MRT from St. Peters to Minneapolis.

The crossing itself was every bit as nice and safe as the western terminus.

Most of the way across the water, I officially crossed into my third state of this tour, Tennessee.

The eastern end of the Big River Crossing connects to a riverside trail. Even in April, before the grass had greened, it was pretty.

From there it was an easy six mile ride through Memphis’ rolling hills (nothing like the steep grades of St. Louis) to Hostel Memphis. I sure appreciated the bike lanes on the roads that I was riding. Here is one example.

Just one thing would have made this safer: Swap the parking and bicycle lanes. Use the parked cars as a barrier to further separate the vehicle traffic from the bicycle lane and the sidewalk. Nudge nudge, street planners. This costs absolutely nothing. Why don’t you do it?

The next day was a rest day in Memphis. Errands. Some good food, including more pancakes. For dinner, I got a goat cheese & fig pizza to go with my Midtowner Tennessee Lager at the Cooper House Project. Do stop in here and say hi to Travis.

And then… well… that is a story for the next blog post. Let me just say that big changes are a comin’.

You can read all of the posts about my St. Louis to New Orleans bicycle tour, and see a map of the route, here: St. Louis to New Orleans