Piney Grove Scooter Adventure

 Yup, another scooter adventure!  The mirror extenders arrived yesterday and Eric installed them right away.  Oh man, does that make a big difference!  Now I can see behind me without having to shift my body and twist to see in the mirror.  Sure makes the ride a lot nicer when you can just move your eyes to the mirrors and get a good view of what's behind you.  Eric also installed a set of hand guards on his scooter (mine will be installed this afternoon).

Of course this meant we had to go for a scooter ride to check out the new extenders and what better place to go than Piney Grove, hahahahaha.  Where in the heck is that you might ask.  Well, it's north and slightly east of Tupelo, MS and is one of the very few places that has a swimming beach near us.  We rode about 115 miles today so I'd say Piney Grove is about 57 miles or so from our home in Tupelo.  Perfect little scooter run, especially since we were going to ride the Natchez Trace for 20 or so of those miles.  You can check out Piney Grove here Piney Grove.

Warm and humid but the sky looked promising and the scooters were ready to roll!

We left home about 10 am and immediately got on the Natchez Trace heading north.  We made a quick stop at the Chickasaw Village Site at milepost 261.8.  When we turned in to the exhibit we spied a turtle crossing the road.  Eric made sure to help the little critter across safely.

The exhibit is well done and worth a stop.  We didn't do the entire interpretive series of signs but managed to get a few.  Probably will make a stop here again sometime and read all the signs.

Some giant fungi were growing at the exhibit!  Would be worth a fortune if they were truffles, lol!

Eric had mapped our route and has a GPS mounted on his scooter.  We have yet to get mine mounted (but soon I hope).  So I was just following along.  We exited the Trace and apparently went the wrong direction.  Soon enough we discovered our folly and got turned around in the proper direction.  No problem, it was really very nice to cruise along at 55 mph on very rural roads.  Lots of stuff to look at and the roads were fairly decent.  Best of all, there was very little traffic.

Scootering along we took a quick break at Hobo Station.  There is nothing there but it was a good place to pull off the highway for a few minutes.

I need to get more miles on the scooter seat so I don't have to stop every 30 miles to shake out the bootie!  Now our route got more interesting.  We stepped down to even smaller, rural roads that eventually took us here!  Yes, that is a gravel road!

I'll tell you, riding these little ADV 150 scooters is sooooooooo easy.  They just gobble up the gravel road with no sliding around.  Very confidence inspiring!  I like it 😎  And, I can almost flat foot on the scooter AND it doesn't weigh very much.  No worrying about getting the kickstand down because of the road camber.  Nope - no worries.  It just makes me SMILE 😄

After the gravel road we got back on pavement for the last few miles to Piney Grove.  It has a lovely entry road.

We found it interesting that the Corps of Engineers posted all the hunting regulations and seasons.

We also found it interesting that there were bird houses scattered throughout the park.

We followed the road until we came to the swimming beach area where we found everything CLOSED because of COVID.  Crap!  Oh well, we were the only peeps there but for some park workers.  We couldn't really explore like we wanted to so we had to suffice with a few photos.

No pets, no alcohol and keep six feet apart!!!!

Darn!  Well, now we know what's there and hope to return for a nice beach day next season.  Hopefully this Covid crap will settle down and we can all get back to doing the things we like to do!  Humpfff..

It was now lunchtime and my tummy was growling.  We noticed a sign for a deli/gas station a few miles up the road and decided to check that out.   Lunch was at the Martyville Burton One Stop!  I'm not a fan of gas station food but we really didn't have a lot of choices so we made the best of it.  I do have to admit the place was hopping with lunchtime business.  Lots of trucks did the stop, grab & go.  

Cheeseburger and fries......meh.....

But my Honey looks happy 😗

After lunch we simply reversed our route!  Exploring on the backroads of Mississippi on the ADV 150 scooters is just so much fun!  It is so easy to take them anywhere without worrying about the terrain, parking, turning around, etc.  Yes, I love my Beastie Bike for eating up the big miles but this little scooter is giving me a ton of SMILES!

Because we just reversed our route we had another go at the gravel road, lol.

Finally, we were back on Natchez Trace heading south to Tupelo.  We made a quick stop at Pharr Mounds (the restroom was closed because of -------- COVID!).

So far, we had been lucky with no rain.  Lots of cloud cover which was just fine because it kept the heat down to the mid-80's.  I was just about to say something to Eric about our luck with the weather when splat, splat, splat.  Drops began to fall.  Gently at first so no problem.  Eric asked if I wanted to stop and put on my rain jacket.  Nah, this isn't too bad, let's just continue on.  Bad decision!  Remember Tucson?  Always take the first opportunity to gear up because if you don't it will be too late, hahahahahaha.

Yeah, it rained pretty darn hard.  Fortunately I had my pinlock in my visor so I didn't fog up but I also had a mesh jacket on.  Didn't take but a minute or two before I was thoroughly soaked.  Talk about evaporative cooling!  I was fine until the rain started pounding down in huge drops covering the road in water and decreasing visibility.  I wasn't comfortable going 58 mph in that weather, on that road, on the scooter so we dropped the speed to 50 mph and I felt much better.  

We rode about 15 miles in the rain and then came into a sunny patch.  Instant sauna!  Next thing we knew it was our exit off the Natchez Trace and we were rolling into the driveway, home sweet home.  Got our wet gear hung up to dry and am debating whether or not it's close enough to call it cocktail hour ;-)

It's a process but we are slowly getting the scooters kitted out for touring.  We need to figure out some sort of luggage or top box and we plan on maybe a RotoPax for extra fuel.  I need more saddle miles so I suspect you'll be seeing more blog posts.

Thanks for following along!

Cheers,

Cletha