Upon crossing the state line into Mississippi via Ridge Road, traffic has come to a stop. Looking further up the road there is an SUV laying on its roof in the ditch of the oncoming lane. This is a two lane back road on a straight section, no idea what they did to roll that vehicle but they sure did a good job of it! I turned the bike off and sat in traffic and watched the tow truck wrap a cable through the front and rear windows around the door frame, then using the wench to pull the SUV back onto its wheels. A few moments later they had the SUV on the tow truck and the road was cleared. I only sat in traffic for around 15 minutes, so not too bad and it was cool to watch them pull that SUV over. I continued heading south west through rural Mississippi, traveling another fifty miles until I came to the town of Tupelo. I make a stop to see the birthplace of Elvis Presley. The museum itself is closed but Elvis’ boyhood home and other sites on the property are all outside, so I was able to walk around and read a bit about the history of Elvis.
The home Elvis was born in is a small two bedroom home built by his father, grandfather, and uncle. The family had to move out of the home a few years after Elvis was born due to not being able to make payments. Being just a few years removed from the Great Depression, the times were financially difficult for the Presley’s. They continued to reside in Tupelo until Elvis was thirteen at which point they moved to Memphis Tennessee. Also at the museum is the Assembly of God Church that Elvis attended as a child.
It was at this church where Elvis was first exposed to the sounds of Southern Gospel music, that he would incorporate into his music throughout his career. Frank Smith, a minister in the church, taught Elvis the D, A, and E chords which were all that were needed to play ‘Ole Shep’. There are a few other interesting pieces and a few statues of Elvis as well; one being a life-size statue of Elvis as a thirteen year old boy and the other known as ‘Becoming’.
‘Becoming’ is a statue which symbolizes the transformation of Elvis the boy, to Elvis the entertainer; with the young humble boy sitting on a milk crate with the larger than life size statue of the entertainer standing above him. It is interesting to see the humble beginnings of a young life and the end result of the ‘success’ Elvis had. At one end, it displays how hard work in a free enterprising country can lead to a better life but it also demonstrates the troubles of materialism (as Elvis struggled with throughout his career along with drug and other addictions). It is always a balance and a tight rope that one must walk, as losing focus on what truly matters can lead to a long fall.
After finishing up at the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum, I continue westward to find a camping spot as it is getting close to dark. I ride towards the sun across rural northern Mississippi via route 278. The road is open and the weather is great, making for a mostly enjoyable ride (as I had a few cars cross the yellow line on me and another tailgate me). I make it over to Holly Springs National Forest and by this time it is about dark. I drive down the long dirt road to where the campground is located. When I arrive there, I find the campground completely overgrown (with weeds and grass almost up to my knees) and garbage everywhere. Being located right near a creek, the area was swarming with mosquitoes and other biting bugs. It is clear that this site is not maintained very well and I decided to move on and look for something else. I drive back out of the National Forest land, looking for a place to camp but not finding any clearings. I looked at a couple of churches nearby but couldn’t find any spots that were back off the road where I could make myself hidden. I decide to make the 25 mile drive over to Sardis Lake where there is a camping spot on Army Corp of Engineers land. The GPS takes me on a route where a bridge is out, so I had to back track a bit and find a different way to the campground. It’s nearing 2200 by the time I arrive and I find that the campground is closed and gated off. There is a little path just to the left of the gate though that I can fit the bike through, so I drive past the gate and look for a place to set up my tent. I find a spot a little ways back tucked in behind some trees. While trying to park the bike, I accidentally hit the horn button and give a loud honk. Not a good thing when trying to be inconspicuous! This spot is tucked far enough away that no one is around to even hear it. I set up my tent, fighting off the hoards of caterpillars that are crawling all over the ground. I have never seen so many caterpillars before, there were hundreds of them and I was trying to keep them out of my tent. Once getting my tent set up, I crawl in and try to get some sleep. It is very hot and humid tonight, so I have been just dripping with sweat which makes it difficult to sleep but eventually I am able to get some shut eye.
The next morning, I wake up a little after sunrise and get the bike packed up. I am due for an oil change, as I am at the four thousand mile mark on the current change (having traveled three thousand miles on this trip with another one thousand being put on by the previous owner). I make my way over to a nearby Walmart where they have a large parking lot where I can tuck myself away and change the oil right there. They sell the filter and oil I need for the bike, so I purchase those along with a funnel and an aluminum cooking pan to use as a drain pan. This is the first time doing an oil change on this bike, so I was not sure what I was getting myself into. It would be a learning experience! I first take the four allen bolts out of the front cowling, that hides the skid plate protecting the oil pan and filter. Removing the skid plate turned out to be a chore.
It is bolted in four different places and none of the bolts are easy to access. I first had to remove a plate that is used to mount the cowling which makes room for me to get a socket onto the large bolt that mounts to the front of the skid plate. I use a crescent wrench to hold the nut on the opposite side of the bike and get the bolt removed. I then use a wrench to remove the bolt located near the rear brake pedal. It was about this time that it started raining, so I cover the bike with a tarp and sit under that to try to stay dry. Thankfully it didn’t rain too hard and it quit after twenty minutes, but still was long enough to get everything wet. There are two more bolts located at the bottom of the skid plate, which are hex heads. There is no way to get a wrench on the nut located inside the skid plate and the hex heads are encrusted with dirt and grime from the road, which I was not able to clean it out well enough to use an allen wrench on it. Thankfully I was able to rotate the skid plate downward far enough to make room to get to the oil pan bolt. The funnel I have is large and I am barely able to fit it underneath the oil pan bolt to funnel the oil into the aluminum pan. As I remove the oil drain plug, soon the oil begins to overflow out of the top of the funnel as the funnel is not able to drain the oil fast enough. Oil begins to fill up the skid plate. Thankfully there is a hole at the corner so the oil is able to drain from that hole into the aluminum drain pan underneath. Needless to say it was a bit of a mess but I was able to contain the oil and keep it in the drain pan. Once all the oil is drained out, I replace the oil filter and put the drain plug back in. I wipe out the bottom of the skid plate to clean the oil out of it. I reattach the skid plate to the bottom of the engine, which was a chore as it took some manual manipulation to get the plate lined back up to the holes. I clean out the funnel of the used oil and then fill the bike with just under three quarts of fresh oil. I pour the used oil into the oil jug and later take that to an auto store to recycle it. It took me about two hours to get the oil changed which is much longer than I was expecting. This is part of the risk when taking a bike on a trip that you haven’t spent much time with, but you adapt and overcome! Fighting with the rain and skid plate didn’t make it easy but now that I have done it once, it should be easier going forward. I am glad to have it changed and it’s only around 1030 by this time.
The skies had cleared at this point, so I take a little break and sit on the curb. I did a little research and planned out the next couple of days of my route. One big consideration are the virus shutdowns, as I do not want to spend too long in a place that is locked down nor do I want to support states with rogue governors and representatives. Over the past couple of weeks, I have not been able to get my camera working since it fell over right before I left on my trip. I have been looking at others on eBay and decided to buy the same camera that I broke. I spoke with the seller and am having them ship it directly to a post office just outside of Kansas City in the town of Pleasant Hill. I have never had a package directly shipped to a post office before, so we will see how this goes.
After my research, I decide to make like Elvis and head to Memphis. Tennessee is open for business and I was getting hungry, it is nearing lunchtime after all! I hop on the Strom and make the hour long drive to Tom’s Bar-B-Q.
Tom’s Bar-B-Q was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for their rib tips, so I decided I would go and see how they are for myself. I order the rib tips plate with green beans and mac and cheese and take a seat at a small table near a window. The rib tips were very good, full of flavor, and were much needed to satisfy my appetite. Now that I have some food in my stomach, I ride around Memphis to scope out the city. It is a pretty neat town that has its own unique kind of vibe to it. There was definitely a lot of activity on the streets and I could see that there was potential for it to be a violent place at times (as noted in the statistics). I did make a drive down Beale Street, as it is famed for blues history. Everything is obviously closed due to the virus shutdowns but it is a cool area that I’m sure is full of good blues music when things are open. Wouldn’t mind stopping by here later down the road when the blues music has started filling the air again.
After cruising around Memphis for awhile, I hop onto I-40 briefly to cross the Mississippi river, passing by the huge Bass Pro Shops Pyramid store in the process (quite a building!), and enter the state of Arkansas. This is my first drive across the Mississippi and immediately after crossing the river I notice the landscape change. Everything became really dry and flat. Crazy how the landscape changes so fast once crossing the Mississippi. With everything being so flat, the wind was unrelenting. I fought my way through heavy crosswinds while trying to take in the vast open spaces. With few trees around and the ground being so flat, you get a lot more wide open spaces that you don’t see on the other side of the Mississippi. I make my way up route 77 before turning onto route 61. My first stop was the Bassett POW Camp. Eastern Arkansas was the site of numerous POW camps for World War II to house German and Italian POWs. There is not much left at the Bassett site outside of the entrance gate and a large empty field that sits behind it. This camp held about 300 prisoners and it is said that around 23,000 POWs passed through various POW camps in Arkansas. Prisoners at this location were paid 80 cents a day to pick cotton which helped keep the agriculture industry going.
A little ways down the road from Bassett is the town of Dyess which was my next stop. Dyess was an agrarian community that was established by the federal government during the Great Depression as part of Theodore Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was actually the largest one ever created by the federal government and was known as ‘Colonization Project No. 1’. It became home to 500 families who were given 40 acres and a mule that they had to farm to pay off the homes they were given. Ray and Carrie Cash along with their five children (including Johnny) were one of these families and they moved to Dyess in 1935.
Johnny would stay in Dyess until 1950, when he joined the Air Force straight out of high school. The house itself is quite small (especially for seven people) and was surrounded by nothing but cotton fields (currently the fields are full of soybeans). It was pretty crazy to see as the land is very flat and there were no other houses in sight. Growing up in Dyess had a profound impact on Cash’s music which included a couple of songs such as ‘5 feet high and rising’ which tells the story of the family farm being washed away by flooding (which happened on two separate occasions). You can take a tour of the inside of the house but it has been closed down due to the virus. After checking out the house for a little bit, I drove down the road into the town center. It consisted of a theater, city hall, post office, and the visitor center for tours of Johnny Cash’s boyhood home. It was a pretty neat little town center.
At this point it was getting later in the afternoon and I had to find a place to camp for the night. I made my way up route 77 before turning right onto route 18. I then made my way towards Mallard Lake where they allow camping along the waters edge. There were quite a few locals out fishing off the banks and a few boats out on the water. It is a nice area with a gravel road around the entire lake and water on either side (with a few feet of grassy areas with trees and shrubs in between). I found a larger pull off area that I could use to set up my tent. I sat by the side of the lake and watched the sun set behind the trees; it was quite a beautiful sunset.
After watching the sun set, I set up my tent and also set up my GoPro to get a night lapse video of the sky. As it got dark, the wind began to really pick up. My tent was shaking pretty violently due to the strong wind gusts. I decided to move my bike in front of my tent to use the bike as a shield from the wind. I tied the rain fly to the bike to help stabilize the tent. I also took a few rocks from a nearby fire ring to use as anchors for my tent, as the ground was gravel and I could not use my tent stakes. The wind blew hard all night and thus my tent shook all night. My anchor points held but the large wind gusts and noise made it difficult to sleep, so I only ended up getting a couple of hours of on and off sleep. Additionally it got quite cold, with the heavy winds chilling me to the bone. With not sleeping much, I was up and out of bed a little before the sun began to rise. I packed up my tent, something that wasn’t easy to do with the heavy winds, and loaded up the bike. I drove into town to see if I could find something warm to eat but everything in Arkansas has been shut down. The wind was still relentless so I stopped at a nearby Walmart, since they were open, just to get out of the wind for a few minutes and to warm up a bit. After getting a bit of the chill out of my bones, I decided to make the short trek north and do a little exploring in Missouri.