Dam!

SAVANNAH, Tenn. – They call the Return to Shiloh Rally’ “the best BMW rally by a dam site” and this is the dam.

I’m camped in a piney woods on the banks of the historic Tennessee River and the mosquitoes are numerous, big and aggressive. I set up my tent as quickly as possible and then got the hell out of the woods.

I’m told that old timers here say they can’t remember a worse year for mosquitoes. At the moment, I’m at the Pickwick Landing State Park Inn & Conference Center where they have free wifi. As soon as I finish here, I’ll ride to a convenience store and invest in some serious mosquito repellant.

The ride down here was easy and uneventful. I left home about 9:50 a.m. and took the northern route gassing and hitting an ATM at Paragould and taking U.S. 412 east across the Missouri bootheel and into Tennessee, crossing I-40 at Jackson and avoiding Memp his. I stopped somewhere south of Jackson for a McDonald’s lunch, gassed again about 28 miles from the rally site and rolled in to the campgrounds about 2:15 p.m., having covered a little less than 200 miles.

I was the 18th person to register, just ahead of a guy from Lincoln, Neb. I thought I saw Rick Nelson ride in, but I was probably mistaken.