Weather: 73degF (23C) and 100% humidity at 9am and foggy. Fog burnt off by about 10am and it was on/off sunny for the rest of the day. It remained very humid with the high of 85F (30C) and a heat index of 96. Later in the day, a big thunderstorm that was brewing for a long time hit just as I neared the hotel.
Distance: 44.8miles (72.1kms)
Elevation gain: 2093 feet (638meters)
Calories burned: 2794
Svitz Index 8.5/10 (10/10 when the sun was out but it remained cloudy for much of the day).
Average moving speed: 12.8mph (21 kph) in 3hrs33mins of riding (slow touring of some sites and towns)
While today's ride was relatively short today, it had a lot of interesting sights and sites. I mostly followed the busy highway to Union, getting off it before getting on the backroads again to MS Hwy19 which I took to Philadelphia. My speed varied a lot, slow on the backroads, fast when chased by dogs, slow as I checked out the small towns and fast again on the main highway. As the elevation profile shows, there were many little hills, but some were steep enough with grades up to 9%. It does not sound like a lot, but with a bike that weighs 32 lbs and panniers weighing 35 pounds (as well as myself), I'm hauling over 200 lbs up these hills.
The first small town was Decatur where I saw my first memorial, in this case about General Sherman's trip here during the Civil War, which seemed to be a narrow escape for him.
As usual, I was chased by about 10 dogs on the backroads. One particularly large and seemingly agressive dog thankfuly responded to the owner lounging on the porch. I would guess that today's score was Johno 8 -dogs 2, with one draw.
The back roads often bring unexpected sights - at one particular crossroads (of which there are many) I saw this sign on a church, which I suppose indicates that many have been lost there too.
Most of the houses are trailer style, some tarted up but a lot of them are in varying states of disrepair, neglect, and abandonment. This photo shows a better looking home with the usual enormously large lawns. The undulating road is also typical.
The small town of Union has a mostly empty downtown. Only a few shopfronts have currently operating businesses, It looked very sad.
But a highlight was this 1931 Ford Model A in amazing nick that I saw parked at the Piggly Wiggly (grocery) store. I asked the owner about the car and he claimed that it starts faster than his new car. He told me to pay attention to its fast ignition, and then blew the old style car horn for entertainment. I was thinking about the cars in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967 movie); that one would have fit perfectly
Much of the cleared forests are covered with kudzu, which I noticed on my first visit to Mississippi in 1976. It's known as the 'vine that ate the South' and was introduced in the late 1800s to control erosion. Apparently kudzu can grow up to a foot a day. I also saw a large North American racer (non-venomous) snake that startled me as is slithered along the grass margin of the narrow road.
I have long wanted to go to the site of an infamous event during the Civil Rights movement - of 'Freedom Summer 1964". Here at this crossroads, three young men who were organizing voter registration of the local Black population were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan and the local police (they overlapped) on June 21, 1964. The details of their killing is too gruesome to relate but the full story can be found here
https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/mississippi-burning
It was at this crossroads a few hundred yards off the busy highway 19 that the killings actually took place. There is no marker of any kind.
On the main highway, there is (was) an official memorial. However, it's gone/stolen/destroyed/being repaired - who knows? Apparently, the memorial has been shot up and defaced on many occasions and has been frequently replaced. This is what it looked like when it stood.
Now, there is only a small informal memorial where the official one used to stand. The 1989 movie "Mississippi Burning" (the FBI name for their investigation) retraces (mostly) the search for the bodies of the three young men and the attempt to prosecute the killers.
As I left the site of the lynchings, I noticed quickly darkening skies and an approaching thunderstorm. I raced to Philadelphia on the busy highway 19 and made it to a gas station before the skies opened with a massive amount of water in a short time. The temperature dropped significantly after the storm passed.
Tomorrow promises to be another hot and humid day with the heat index about 100F again. Next week looks quite intimidating as a heat dome builds over the central US.
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