Do You Hear Banjos?

 We headed out on the ADV 150 scooters shortly after lunch today with the goal of reaching Ripley, MS so Eric could grab a Welcome To sign for one of his tag games.  Ripley is only about 45 miles from home but Eric upped the fun factor by routing us on small roads.  Before departure Eric checked our tire pressure and was surprised to find that both scoots were low, front and rear.  No problem, he fired up the compressor and set all tires at the appropriate pressure.  

It was a perfect day for a ride.  A little overcast which kept it from getting super hot and the temps were in the low to mid 80's.  Best of all the humidity factor was quite low so temps in the 80's was quite comfortable, especially when moving.  First we filled up the gas tanks at our local corner Texaco and spent a whopping $5.49 total for the two scooters!  Gotta love that.  I'm getting 84.9 mpg on my scoot and Eric is averaging about 72.4 mpg.  Then we took off on yet another scooter adventure.  It was surprising how different the feel of the scooter was with the proper air pressure.  Bumps in the road were much more noticeable!

Our route took us down MS178 and turned right at Scarlet's Donuts to MS15.  Both are pleasant two lane highways with speed limits of 55 mph.  The scoots have no problem maintaining that speed except for the hills.  The key to the hills is to ramp up your speed going down so you have lots of momentum to carry you up the other side, hahahaha!  MS15 took us across the Little Tallahatchie River to the tiny berg of North Haven where we then turned onto County Road 115 to Ripley.  Once in Ripley, Eric was able to bag his Welcome To tag.

Now it was time for some more scooter fun.  Rather than just retrace our route back home, Eric took us on a round-a-bout ride that included a very short section of a divided 4 lane highway (less than a mile), then we turned right onto County Road 700, before turning onto County Road 701.  CR701 was a nice paved two laner that took us to CR744, another paved two laner but getting smaller with no lines and very broken pavement.  This bridge was the nicest paved portion of CR744 😉  

View from the other side of the bridge.

View up the road.  This area is particularly lovely.  Green, lush, peaceful and just meandering along.  I could ride this type of road all day long!

From CF744 we turned onto CF745 which was a gravel road.  This section was nice, hard packed gravel and easy, peasy!

We made a few more turns to keep us on gravel roads, eventually riding through a thick forest.

We stopped for a little bootie break.

Eric had mounted my "Bones" dude to the front of my scooter.  I've had this little totem for a good number of years and it always makes me giggle.  Bones has been around!

After our quick break we scootered on yet another gravel road.  But this one started out gravel and quickly gave way to dirt with kudzo trying to eat up the road.  At some places there was tall grass growing in the middle of the narrow dirt road.  Somehow I don't think this road gets a lot of travel, lol.

It was right about here where Eric asked if I heard Banjos, lol.  I cracked up because I was just about to ask him if he heard Banjos!   Hahahahahaha.  Very, no extremely, rural northern Mississippi.  Banjos are expected in these parts.  Peeps look at you funny and say, "You're not from around here, are ya?"

Actually, we didn't encounter anyone on these very small back roads except one ATV with a couple of guys who just motored on by.

We did, however,  run into some areas that weren't so pleasant and had lots of washboard and pockets of deep, slippery gravel or humps of gravel in the center making changing lanes a bit of a pucker moment. Eric did ask if I wanted to turn around and ride that section again to get photos. I politely declined 😉

I'm loving how the scooter just scoots along.  It makes gravel and dirt easy.  Well, maybe I'll save that opinion until we hit something really gnarly!

Eventually we ended back on paved two lane highways that took us through little bergs.  We had to make a stop for this photo opportunity in Baldwyn, MS.  Love the little "Police" car 😁  Fits right in with the little scooter!

Our trip home eventually took us to the Natchez Trace.  Surprised?  Not really, hahahahaha, I love riding the Trace and it makes for a pleasant, easy ride home at the end of the day.

We made a stop at the Old Town Creek pullout.

A spur road from the Old Town Creek pullout took us to this little pond.

And then it was maybe another 5 or 6 miles and we were pulling into our driveway at Cottonwood Cottage.  It was a glorious little scooter ride!  I loved the small roads and giggled on the gravel and dirt roads.  We only rode about 100 miles but it was worth 1,000 smiles 😃.

Thank you for following along with me.  Stay tuned because I'm 100% certain we'll be having more scooter adventures!

Cheers,

Cletha