{"id":1695,"date":"2012-11-12T20:13:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T00:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2012-11-12T20:13:28","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T00:13:28","slug":"natchez-trace-parkway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/natchez-trace-parkway\/","title":{"rendered":"Natchez Trace Parkway"},"content":{"rendered":"

(I got home a week ago but have been running non-stop since my return.)<\/p>\n

I didn’t get away from La Follette until close to noon and got to ride through the northwest gusting winds from hurricane Sandy through Knoxville and Nashville. I promised myself before getting on the road that I would clear my head and focus on the ride, but after looking at houses in Tennessee I was pretty preoccupied and had to remind myself to stop thinking about it.<\/p>\n

West of Nashville I stopped at the Loveless Caf\u00e9. The Loveless is a fairly famous establishment that serves classic southern cooking in huge portions. If in Nashville or on the Trace it\u2019s a highly recommended stop. The food was good and the service was great.<\/p>\n

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I rode part of the Trace that afternoon and started again the next morning in 27 degree temperatures. That was a new record low for riding (previous was 29) so I had all my cold weather gear on. I kept thinking about the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, or the Pillsbury Dough Boy, or the Michelin Tire Man and trying to decide which of them I resembled most closely.<\/p>\n

The first stop on the Trace was at the grave site of Meriwether Lewis.<\/p>\n

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After riding a section of the the Old Trace that wandered through the trees I took a break in Collinwood when I saw a sign for a welcome center. It was a little chilly for the unheated restrooms along the parkway. I was greeted at the door and encouraged to help myself to hot coffee and cookies and refill my water bottles. The people were so nice I hung out for a while chatting with them.<\/p>\n

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One of the most surprising things I saw along the Trace was an over 20 mile stretch after a sign reading \u201cTornado Damage April 2011\u201d. I didn’t stop to take pictures, but it was staggering the damage that went on for miles. The forest was simply snapped off about 15-20 feet off the ground. I would look to the left and right and see homes not very far away that had undamaged trees. It was like the tornado had followed the road.<\/p>\n

The original plan was to ride the entire parkway to Natchez but I bailed after about 300-350 of the 450 miles and headed for east for home. I was clearly preoccupied with other things and decided to do the southern part of the Trace when I was more focused.<\/p>\n

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(I got home a week ago but have been running non-stop since my return.) I didn’t get away from La Follette until close to noon and got to ride through the northwest gusting winds from hurricane Sandy through Knoxville and Nashville. I promised myself before getting on the road that I would clear my head […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip_reporting","tag-natchez-trace-parkway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}