We ate an early breakfast at the Home2Suites and then relaxed a bit in our room until the rain stopped. The first day on the Trace was shorter so we had time to wait.
We'd been looking forward to stopping at the Loveless Cafe for a biscuit sandwich. Located near the Natchez Trace Northern Terminus, The Loveless Cafe was opened in 1951 as a hotel and restaurant. They reportedly have the best biscuits in the country. We ordered two biscuits with egg, cheese, and meat which we ate at the outdoor picnic tables. The Cafe was very busy and they made a mistake so they had to remake our order but we got to try the Loveless Cafe. They're not flaky biscuits so not exactly what we were expecting but they were good. Lots of movie and sports stars have signed photos hanging in the restaurant - Elvis ate here.
We entered the Natchez Trace at the Northern Terminus about 4 miles from our hotel. Shortly after starting the Trace, we rode over the nation's first Double Arch Bridge at Birdsong Hollow completed in 1994. It's a 155 feet tall and was an engineering marvel for it's time. After taking some pictures and talking to some folks who liked our tandem and had lots of questions, we rode across the bridge.
The traffic on the Parkway was very considerate today, usually giving us the whole lane.
We stopped at Leiper's Fork with dreams of a nice dinner and maybe a stroll through an art gallery. Research fail! Everything in town was closed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. So, we rode back to Leiper's Fork Market by the Trace for a burger and chips and we got two small Hunt Brothers Pizzas to take to our AirBnB for dinner.
We planned a shorter ride the first day because we wanted to stay at the Quirky Canary AirBnB and because we were seeing some contradictory info online about how much climbing there was over the hillier sections of the first few days.
The Quirky Canary was our lodging for the night, and it did not disappoint. This 1974 GMC Motorhome was converted to an AirBnB. Cute, well maintained and very yellow, it's located in Leiper's Fork near the Trace. Though it's usually booked, we got a reservation. An AirBnB with it's own Instagram account. How could we pass it by? The motorhome had over 79000 miles on the odometer and 3400 hours on the generator hour meter. This motorhome saw a lot of use in it's day.
After our nice showers in the outdoor stall, with the electric space heater set to 68 degrees, we ate our Hunt Bros. Pizza and later some microwave popcorn that only half popped due to the small, low power microwave before turning in.
With judicious use of NSAID's and heavy favoring of the sore knee, we made it through the first day and John crossed his fingers that the knee wouldn't be much worse in the morning.
Route ridden (color coded for altitude variation).
Daily miles: 25.3
Total miles: 51.4
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