Underground Railroad Bike Route
I decide to switch things up on Day Three. It is the weekend and so I know the route managers at Adventure Cycling have not gotten my message inquiring about how to tell the bike route from the street route. I decide to just follow the road route in its entirety in the car as if I was on a bike. If a bike trail appears, we’ll jump out and ride it.
Using the bike route app in this manner takes getting used to. All you can go by is a colored line on your phone screen. There is no audio like in your car or on Google maps. On the plus side, I know that following the bike app means no bridges.
After an hour of driving back roads, lonely state highways, and a few winding streets paved and gravel alike past homes, I begin to understand how the route was put together. The planners at the ACA put together a route designed to connect points A, B, C, etc., together with as many low traffic paths as possible.
This is great for biking. In a car it is tedious. Sure, I’m getting to see America up close like I wanted, but I’m still detached. The roads are two lanes with no shoulders. If I see something interesting, I cannot stop and check it out. It goes by too fast and there is no easy way to make a U-turn. On a bike, you just stop, take pictures, speak to someone, or shoot a quick video.
Sitting beside me, David huffs constantly. It is obvious he does not understand why we are driving down a street that look film locations for the Dukes of Hazzard. I cannot blame him. There is nothing to see or experience in the damn car.
Eventually the route takes us through Shiloh National Military Park. It would be a nice place to explore on bike or during the week, but on a Sunday there is nothing to see. We drive through and hit Route 22. It is here that I finally find something I find interesting.
We are in Tennessee now and driving down the highway, two things strike me. The first is every house, large or small, nice or a trailer has an American flag outside. Tennessee is a red state, so I should not be surprised and I’m not. What strikes me, however, is that some homes are obviously at income levels you would think would make them bitter in America. Many of the families I’m driving past are not privileged, but they love their country anyway. Quite a contrast to the mini-Mansions owned by liberals, like say Patrice Cullors, who hate the country but are living well.
The second interesting item of note was that at some point we hit a section of Route 22 that I thought of as Corn Alley. On either side of the state highway tracks of corn that continue repeatedly. I’m not talking about large, rolling hills of acreage filled with corn. These were one to four acres at most, and you could tell the homes in between them were not working the land themselves. This was obvious because none of the homes had farm equipment or barns to hold farm equipment. It would have been interesting to speak to one resident and find out if they were renting the land to corporate farms or other people.
As we move further into Tennessee, the land changes and we move from corn to open land with modest homes on them. It all made me think of the Florida Georgia Line song, Dirt. Which is funny. FGL’s song has always been a butt of my joke about how country singers will turn anything into a song, including a song about dirt. Of course, that’s not what the song is about. It’s a love song about how a man finds the love of his life and just wants to marry her and find a piece of land to settle down on with her and build a life.
The homes I drive past remind me of that. So many of them are on good sized land but have small houses. As if the house was an afterthought, but the land was the focus. Coming from Florida where homes are packed together, it’s a pleasant change.
We drive until we get to Land between the Lakes Recreation Area. I forgo primitive camping and rent a cabin instead. The cabin has power and AC, but no water. This time I am prepared and have bottled water to cook and clean with.
For the first time we get to camp in the way I envisioned. David is in the cabin trying to stream a wrestling video and I’m putting my Jetboil and grill to use. Dinner is grilled chicken and Italian sausage. The only downside is the sleeping bag is still uncomfortable as hell.
