4.27.07: Heading to Emelle, AL
Weather: Partly cloudy, high 70s
Ride: 29.7 miles Check out our route here…(You’ll have to scroll around on the map to see the whole route since this is a long ride.)
New Slogan (#4):
Once & Future York
We based our fourth slogan on the designs of one industrious sign-maker in town.
On our way out of York, we stopped at the middle school to introduce ourselves and set-up up some meetings with different classes. The school administrators were certain that the kids would be excited by the bike.
Our plan was to take some back roads to reach a town called Emelle. We would visit a few small towns along the way: Millville, Payneville and Boyd. From our USGS map it was impossible to tell the size of the towns and road conditions.
Though we traveled through some exquisite countryside, we saw very few people.
Because there were no road or town signs, we quickly became lost! We missed the turn for the Payneville Millville Road, our ‘short-cut’ and ended up in Lauderdale County, MS. Luckily for us, school was letting out and a school bus, announcing the county name, rode by. If we hadn’t seen the bus, we would have thought we were still in Alabama and still heading in the right direction…It was challenging to synch the USGS with the GPS. So, we back-tracked about three miles until we thought we found the Payneville Millville Road.
Turns out that the Payneville Millville Road is a dirt turn-off that looks very much like a logging road. Wanting to continue our adventure, we went ahead on the brilliant orange rutted passageway to see what we would see.
The road was only five miles (give or take) but because of muddy conditions, it was very challenging to navigate. During our several hour ride/walk, we saw only one person, a satisfied hunter who zoomed by us in his ATV with a few still turkeys stacked in the back.
At a certain point, the road degenerated into a narrow path and we came upon a rusting, depression-era truss bridge with a badly damaged approach trestle. After testing the bridge, we safely crossed.
We gave up on trying to reach Emelle since the sun was heading down. We made our way back to York and decided that we would not travel on anymore back roads.
