Day Fifty-Six: Tupelo - Amory

We crawled out of bed just in time to see the Kellums before they left for Church. Andrew popped a tray of Monkey Bread into the oven for breakfast and handed us mugs of steaming coffee, then they walked out the door in their Sunday morning finest, while we sat at the table in our grungy old cycling gear. We said goodbye and thanked them extensively without knowing that we’d see them once more after they returned, since we took a ridiculously long time to get up and out. When we finally rode off, we took one last glance at the cozy home nestled in the trees, and then faced the heat and another long ride.

The first stop was at Elvis’ birthplace (second time’s a charm), which I’m sure would have been a lovely place… if only it were open. We did see the home where he was born, however—a tiny, white wood-paneled box no larger than a single car garage—and then we decided to move on, as it was getting hotter by the minute. The ride to Amory dragged on like none other, hitting us with a heat index of over 110 degrees and not a smidgeon of shade. We pedaled for a long stretch before reaching Nettleton, a town that spanned three, maybe four blocks, then breathed in the air conditioning at a Subway for a quick lunch, during which multiple customers approached us, wondering what the hell we were doing riding our bikes in the heat. Amory, our destination, was only 11 more miles from there, so we sucked it up and rode on, finally reaching a Wal-Mart.

While riding through the parking lot, a strung-out looking woman screamed at me out of her mini-van window, “What the f*** are you looking at, b****?!” For the record, I didn’t even see the woman until AFTER she yelled at me, so that’s when I knew we were in a quality place. We grabbed food for dinner as quickly as possible and left once more, having seen a campground on Google Maps that was supposedly 3 miles down the road, but had no reviews or really any proof that it even existed. When we showed up, we found an extensive, grassy field with three RVs parked in spaces nearly a quarter of a mile from one another. There was a small house at the entrance with a sign on the door that instructed us to call one of three numbers in order to register to camp, but two of the numbers directed us to a man who might not have even been speaking English. Finally, Slater was able to reach the property owner, who promised to be there in 10 minutes. He and his wife showed up and saw our bicycles—that’s when we realized that they were expecting an RV—and they welcomed us to camp for free.

We asked the owner if the campground had restrooms, and when he told us no, he clearly saw the concern on our faces, so he unlocked the house and told us we were welcome to use the facilities. He was a friendly guy, in his thirties or forties, and he seemed a bit anxious about our primitive camping situation; we assured him that we had become quite accustomed to these kinds of things, but they still looked a bit uneasy as they drove away. We pitched our tent and started the camp stove to cook a frozen pasta dinner that had rapidly thawed on our ride back from Wal-Mart. but about halfway through cooking, the campground owner and his wife returned with bags full of groceries. They tossed them onto our picnic table and said, “I know you said you were all set—but we really wanted to help out.” They bought us Lunchables, granola bars, bananas, and more, and while we thought that we had enough food for the night, we soon found ourselves munching on the extra goodies they had given us. All that food must have sweetened me up somehow, and before I knew it, I was eaten alive by mystery bugs (which we now know were chiggers… ew!), so we turned in for the night and slept away in our unbelievably stuffy tent, avoiding the sleeping bags at all costs.