Friday 27 January 2012

Mississippi

We arrived in Mississippi late in the day and it was almost dark. I'd stupidly forgotten to charge my bike light up in New Orleans so I followed Harry's rear light along the side of the road, dodging potholes and bumps by trying to follow his line exactly. We went to a Wal Mart and ate a roast chicken on a bench in the entrance and had a chat with a complete nutcase who had obviously taken a few too many chemicals in his lifetime! We camped around the back of Wal Mart.


The next morning Harry had a really bad migrane and couldn't cycle. We managed to pack up and cycle to a McDonalds at around 1 and stayed there til about 3. While we were there, I listened to the radio. Man U got knocked out of the champions league, unbelievable! If we had more time, we'd have taken the day off and found a hotel room where Harry could recover. Unfortunately time wasn't on our side, so we got going at 3 and managed almost 40 miles that evening which was a great recovery. There were loads of floating casinos in Biloxi. If they're on the water (offshore), they get past the Mississippi gambling laws and it was like being back in Vegas. We cycled straight past them and over a long bridge over an estuary to Ocean Springs.

We found a wood to camp in and set up the tents. Unfortunately, somebody had seen our torches and called the police - it was an abandoned bit of land so very strange that the police responded to a call about two torches in a wood! Anyway, they came and were really suspicious. They warned us to keep our hands where they could see them and made us tell them where our ID's were in the bags because they didn't trust us to get them out ourselves. We were being treated like suspects to a crime, it was way over the top. Anyway, after they'd run a criminal record check on our driving licenses, they started treating us like humans and let us stay in the wood, assuring us that if any crimes happened in the local area, we'd be prime suspects - nice!

We left early in the morning and had breakfast in a Burger King, pretty good and cheap syrup pancakes. The manager looked up the ferry timetable that we needed to take later on that day. Not much happened for the rest of the morning. We saw a bike which had been converted to be driven by a petrol engine! It went about 30 mph and did 150 mpg. I want one!!


As we were approaching the Alabama border, we found a huge scrapyard - a number plate goldmine! Harry asked the owner if we could have a couple and was told he wasn't allowed to give us them. We took that as an invitation to help ourselves so we left with a Mississippi and Alabama plate each and feeling a bit like thieves!!

Only spent a couple of days in Mississippi, the coast was very nice but a bit touristy. A short spell in Alabama next then, the last state, Florida.

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