Well we finally got out and did the first leg of the loop yesterday. I bought the maps and the gps trail over a year ago. With a new baby girl at home there just hasn't been any time to get away to make the trip. After some thought I decided the best (only) way I was going to get to make this trip was to carve it up into several day trips. Yesterday a small group of friends and I decided to take in the first leg of the trip.
The day started doing what we all do best. Eating! We met up at Promos on Lakeland drive to have a bite.
We headed north to Glugstadt. It was a little cool out but a beautiful day for a drive. The trip starts right in the middle of town. You wander north on county roads up through Madison county. There are actually some really pretty views along this leg. The whole first hour or more of the trip is on paved county roads. It is certainly not the most exciting off-roading section of the trip but there are some cool views and quite a few places I have never seen. During this leg you cross back and fourth over the Natchez Trace quite a few times. At times running parallel with the trace on older side roads.
As you wind north you will hop on your first gravel road. This is view will become very common.
as we crossed into Leak county you are on almost 100% gravel roads. Only crossing paved roads to get to more gravel. I was very surprised at how well kept the roads are in this area. They are all county roads and none of them had potholes or washboards. Most of them had been worked with a road grader in the past week. The comment was made over the CB's more than once that the leak county gravel roads were much nicer than anything in the city of Jackson.
As we made our way north toward Kosciusko we veered off to the Northeast and wound up in the thriving metropolis of Ethel Ms. There is fuel for sale in Ethel and snacks but no bathroom. It was under construction. At this point one of our group that had a couple of pre teens in the truck decide to peel off and head back to copiah county. The kids were board to tears. For the most part this section of the loop is just riding on gravel roads. Not nearly enough excitement for them.
We bid farewell to part of the group and the two trucks left out to seek adventure and lunch from Wendy's in Kosciusko. It was only about a 10 mile cruise from Ethel to Kosciusko so we decided to beat feet to town for a bathroom break for our now lone female adventurer. While in town we grabbed a burger from Wendy's and stretched our legs a bit.
Going north from town we went through a federal game preserve. We never got the name of the place but it was obviously a wetland.
It was pretty cool with some sloughs and swamps to look at.
As you go further north we crossed over I-55 for the first time.
On the other side of I-55 is where it got a little more fun. Once you get past the Emory Baptist church the roads get a little more interesting.
They are certainly not as smooth as we had become accustom to. If you make this trip after a fresh rain it will be a little more of an adventure! I am not going to post any pictures so as not to spoil any fun.
There was a cool old cemetery (one of many family plots along the way) we stopped at. There were graves from the very early 1800's.
As we left this cemetery going north to Winona the road basically disappeared at one point. I looked at three different GPS maps as I was concerned we had veered off into someone's private land but believe it or not this was in fact a long forgotten county road. I am again not going to post pictures so that it will be a surprise.
After our fun trailblazing we got in gear and headed up toward Wynona. At that point it was about 3:30 and we decided to stop at the truckstop and grab a snack and then back to Copiah county.
All told we road a total of 320 miles round trip. We got on the trail about 7:45 and got off about 3:30. The first leg was really neat. It would be boring to kids as it's a lot of gravel roads with nothing to see but trees. There are some neat stops though. There is enough dirt and mud to keep it exciting but all of that is on the far north end of this leg of the trip. There is plenty more trail to see we only covered about a quarter of the whole loop. All of this leg can be done in any 4 wheel drive with street tires. There are a few spots you have to watch out for but most of it could be done in a car.
Here is this leg of the trip on a map.
We will take on the next leg as soon as time allows. I will make a report then.
