Tubby Bottom, the notorious impassible Mississippi TAT road that has been the bane of end-to-end adventure enthusiasts since before I heard of the Trans-Am, is now passable … well, at least in the dry season.
I was jamming along rut-less and solid gravel farm roads on my way to Tubby, and was almost surprised by the first water crossing I came to just before Little Egypt Road. The hard-pack went soft-n-sandy pretty quickly and then splish-splash. The crossing was not even two-feet deep in the center with a fairly solid and manageable pebble bottom. It wouldn’t even be a second thought for lightly-loaded dirt bikes, but I took a depth check to ensure my 100-pounds of gear and laptop would make it up-on-two.
After I crossed, the roads did get more rutted and I can see how slimy and difficult it would be to stay on the little ridges that I easily rolled down, in the wet season. To my fortune, this has been an extraordinarily dry September.
The Tubby Bottom bridge is still down, but a mud-packed land bridge with corrugated steel roofing panels layered in there made it pretty simple to pass. As you can see in the pictures, there is a big dip on the left-hand side of the crossing and a little land bridge on the right. The land bridge was a bit too close and narrow to dropping off into the river for my taste and I did give the left-hand dip a walking-weight check since there were some mud “holes” on the far side of it. It too could possibly fill-up and wash away when the rains come.
Check out some more pictures >>
