to Houston and back, 2010: still day 1

We found it! We found it!

I had put an address I thought was associated with the Looseleaf, er, Longleaf Trace into our GPS receiver before we left home. We followed the instructions from the hotel to the location and found ourselves on a rather unattractive section of 4th Street near USM. After driving a ways along 4th Street, we tried turning around and going the other way, and before you could say, "Missisloppi", there we were.


This is the "depot" at the beginning of the trail. There are some shops in the building -- a bicycle rental outfit, and some others, but they were closed.

A few hundred feet down the trail from the depot is this underpass with the trail name on it, to make sure you know where you are.

It's paved and smooth and wide and we saw all kinds of folks walking and running and riding their bikes along the trail. We walked about a mile and a half out the trail before turning around and coming back.

There was lots of wisteria along the trail. Most of it was purple, but we also saw some white flowers growing in the same shape.


This (short) tunnel runs under one of Hattiesburg's thoroughfares, I believe West 7th St, where it curves around to become North 38th Ave. The tunnel is named after Stone D. Barefield, a Mississippi legislator and lawyer who was a driving force behind the development of the trace.



We crossed I-59 on a pedestrian bridge. The picture above is looking north along the interstate, toward our hotel.

Apparently, just after crossing the interstate, we crossed a county line, into Lamar County. They didn't tell us on the way out, but on the way back, we saw the sign above. Since Forrest County is bordered on the west by Lamar County, I assume it was Lamar County we were in when we turned around and headed back.


We saw bamboo alongside the trail. Or perhaps it's called cane is Southern Mississippi?


Near the beginning of the trail, each street lamp had a sponsor. In case you can't make out the sign in this one, it's WIlliam Carey University. (If you click on the picture, you'll get a larger copy that may be clearer.)


More wisteria on a trellis near the depot at the start of the trace.


I don't know if this water tower serves all of Hattiesburg or just USM. It says Hattiesburg on one side and University of Southern Mississippi on the other.

This picture has nothing to do with Hattiesburg. I took it on a greenway in Nashville. It's a long hill and every 100 feet or so are these wooden platforms to the side of the road. Karen and I thought they were very strange.

And this was a pretty maple tree at the Oak Ridge Marina last fall.

Our original plan was to have a no-exercise day today and do our scouting and walk on the Longleaf Trace tomorrow. Since we found the trail and took a walk on it today, Karen suggested that we move on to another one tomorrow.

There's another, similar trail in Louisiana called the Tamany Trace (about 30 miles long). It starts in Slidell and runs to Covington (Louisiana, not Tennessee). I've known about it for a while from my reading on the internet, but I've never visited it.

I had not realized that our path tomorrow will take us right through Slidell, but Karen noticed it when she was examining the map and asked if I'd be interested in checking out the Tamany Trace tomorrow. So that's our new plan. According our information, the drive from Hattiesburg to Slidell will take about an hour and a half. We have a hotel room reserved in Baton Rouge, another hour and a half along from Slidell. So we'll take our time and have an easy day with a break in the middle to explore the Tamany Trace.

And maybe sometime later this year or next, we'll make it back down with our HPVs for a few days of riding.