A bit more than 12 hours before classes start, I’m back.

The day is sunnier than I could have imagined, making it hard to keep pressing east when, at every stop, I’m told I should get ready to get wet.

I missed a turn, but took a detour through Wayne National Forest. The road winds and turns, but also slopes back and forth over rapidly changing grades. As much as I’d like to speed through, I contented myself with slowly rocking up one side of a curve and back down another while taking the trees and rolling farmlands in.

I learned, stopping at a historical marker while two men stared at me from the table they shared inside a closed diner (long-closed by the look, that the “chew MAIL POUCH tobacco” ads painted on or fading from most barns here are the work of Harvey Warwick, who joined a painting crew when they did his barn and just kept going. In 1965 the Lady Bird Johnson Highway Beautification Act banned such ads from near the roadway. In 1974 Congress amended the act to allow and preserve unique ads like this. The ad work is done; now they’re just part of the scenery.

I’m stopped for lunch of a milkshake with fries and coffee with an apple fritter in Clarington, OH. The river washes the side of the town — and justifies its central River Museum — but the mountains towering over it make for the most commanding view. The dairy bar obstinately offers only one size of everything “EXCEPT ice cream cones!!!” The rest of the town square is made up of two churches, one mini mart built out of the first floor of a home, and a large Masonic lodge.

My detour took a lot longer than I’d expected, and I underestimated the size of Pennsylvania when guessing my itinerary. After much dithering about where to stop, I decided to stay west of the gathering storm and, hopefully, start tomorrow dry. This state park east of pitt is a bit crowded, but I like that so many are optimistic that it won’t rain here tonight.

Today was an unexpected treat. I never entirely left the clouds, but I also never hit rain or even still-slicked roads. Being prepped for a rough day, I sped through the great one across the rest of Tennessee, Kentucky, and into Ohio.

Tobacco is everywhere, not just trailing out of open car windows, in the many warehouses of varying ramshackledness, or county history museums, but fields ranging from huge lots to small gardens and even at church cutting contests (rescheduled because of the rain for later this month). There are far more small tobacco crops here than I know of heirloom tomatoes being grown in cities or chickens raised in backyard roosts. Maybe the urban farming movement should shift focus from localism and subsistence to cash crops.

Southern Ohio along the eponymous river is beautiful. When I left my hotel in Tennessee, the clerk told me how he loved riding and this time of year was usually best. It’d be pleasantly warm, but then you’d swoop into a valley and catch that one cool pocket before winding your easy way through: “That’s the closest thing to heaven I know, man.” My day was plenty cool, but the Ohio River Valley was warm and filled with houses of all shapes and colors. What practical Midwesterner, I wondered, was painting his house robin’s egg blue or hers sunflower yellow? It all fit the sky, which grew gradually less cloudy as I moved east in the evening. The sun first grew brighter as the day wound down and then appeared to set in the east, turning it a pale pink yo match certain houses while the western sky loomed dark and broad. It’s a peculiar feeling — and one against most narrative from Arthur on — to ride east into a sunset.

One last observation: the people of the Ohio River Valley love archery. Stores and repair shops spring up almost as often as churches. Sometimes there are more bowsmiths to a small town — just a string of houses — than gas stations. The state park even has a range set up five feet from the road. No rest stops here. Just places to practice archery. In the event of a technopolypse meltdown, come to Ohio. They’ll protect you against the zombies.

I wound up camping east a bit from Decatur, home of arm wrestling champion Steve Cooper. The state park is more of a resort — explicitly and in style — than I’d usually like, but my campsite is a short walk up a hill and through the trees, away from where the RV campers and others who want electrical hookups are. I’ve got a small fire going, just enough for faint light, heat, and comfort. As I was eating my dinner, I realized just how perfect of a last night out it was. I only wished the clouds would break a little to let the stars in. Then I noticed small lights moving occasionally across the ground. They’re small insects, I’m not sure what type. No fireflies are in the sky. I always thought glow worms were just toys from when I was a kid.

I’m sure I’ll figure out what they are when I get home or even tomorrow, but right now they’re just a nice mystery.

So far, the storms had been obliging in moving forward while I slept. I’d stop in overcast weather and wake up to sunshine. That stopped 30 minutes into today’s ride up the Natchez Trace.

I didn’t encounter actual rain until the very end of my day, but I stayed under clouds for the entirety. The Trace didn’t shine like yesterday, but it slowly turned to fall and mountains as trees lost their leaves along the road and moved back to let gray rocks show off condensation.

Shortly after I woke up, before my coffee kicked in, I took a turn quickly and came to an abrupt stop while a faun stared at me before deciding to move along. I woke up and coasted along with plenty of time to stop for flocks of pheasants and one small turtle making more decisive moves across the road.

I’m not sure if it was the weather or the town, but I ate breakfast in a gloomy diner. It was almost full when I walked in, and every head watched me take a corner booth. By the time I reached the end of the trace, where it twists itself out near Nashville, I needed to stop for coffee and wanted to stop for pie. I wound up at Loveless BBQ with some of the best biscuits and homemade jam I’ve ever had in addition to my blueberry pie. One man, a Truman Capote type in a garish aloha shirt and sandals, read the entirety of his Facebook wall to his dining partner who smiled and bought their meal.

The weather predicted just clouds along my route, but that became heavy fog and eventually rain near Cookeville, TN, where I moved to a hotel for the night.

I’m heading north and trying to stay west of the worst weather, but prepping myself for a very wet ride to New York tomorrow and Boston this weekend.

I’d gone to sleep worrying about the cold and rain and heading north. I woke up to blue skies and crisp air.

I rode northeast through Mississippi today, starting off on back roads through small towns and then on the Natchez Trace parkway. Everyone around here I’ve met, both now and previously, warns me that the Natchez is 50mph, and they’ll get ya. I’ve yet to see any enforcement.

Multiple people — from the cafe owner in Canton, whose shop sits next to the square where rat pack and champagne music both bubble out of mounted speakers, and the woman at the Natchez museum — told me that I couldn’t be from up north generally and Boston specifically because I answered them with “yes, ma’am” or “yes, sir.” I’ve got an early twinge of pre-nostalgia for leaving New England after this year, and the fall weather along the Natchez’ mostly manicured forest has me looking forward to a last round of seasons. Still, I’d been actively trying to get back in the habit, especially with strangers while I’m traveling, and I’m pretty glad it made a difference.

I’ve mostly stayed behind or to the side of the storm’s path. It’s made for beautiful, golden riding in an autumn that, according to the Holly Ford gas station owner, had only today replaced humidity you couldn’t breathe in without sweating. He complained about his attorney’s billing practices when I told him I was headed back to law school.

The riding was uneventful, but peaceful and pleasant down two-lane forest roads. By the end when I approached the clouds, a few spotted fauns were blending in with dappling grass. I all but caught up to the storm, so the ground is a little muddy and the stars are mostly hidden, but the fireflies are slowly coming out among the trees.

I left New Orleans after a weekend of eating, drinking, dancing, and regretting a move to the north. It was the first time in long time that I’d gone out with a friend from the city instead of other tourists or exploring on my own. We talked about how tourists tend to see what they want to see, and, in many cases, it’s the same across every city. (This is the beauty of Hard Rock Cafe. It’s the McDonald’s of tourism: it’s a destination in every major tourist city that requires zero new interaction with the unique elements of the city. You know what you can get and exactly how you’ll get it. The only variety is the name on the T-shirt.) The thing, though, is that local New Orleans seems just a different shade of what it puts out for the tourists. It’s better eating, drinking, and dancing, but it’s still crawfish, everything, and everywhere. That may just be my Hard Rock New Orleans, but it’s also wonderful.

I decided to head north to try and avoid the storms Lee was sending southeast of the Appalachians. I left New Orleans in a heavy mist and rode through gray skies into Mississippi before blue and sun finally started peeking through just in time to give way to a starry, half-moon night .

The land here is lush. Ivy trains up every standing object, whether willow, power line, or abandoned bike. It’s consuming the state, turning dead trees green again, and crawling out along telephone lines to reach back down and drag the lines towards earth. Every brown road sign is for an old plantation, but my roads keep taking me through towns in the middle of nowhere where it seems like I’m the only white person around.

I’ve moved into bear country. Onward, Mississippi, is two miles from where Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill a captive bear. Yellow bear crossing signs are everywhere, even my the gazebo in the center of Rolling Fork’s town square, just across from the museum dedicated to Muddy Waters’ hometown.

It’s been a while since I’ve camped in this heavily forested of country, doubtless surrounded by bears. I head to sleep listening for masses crashing through the trees, but only hear the birds fighting by the river. A set of noisy owls is winning.