(Day 7) The Ozarks, a full dosage…

Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Day 7
Russellville, AR to Alma, AR

I was a little slow on the go again this morning. GPS data shows that I was moving at 8:24am, about an hour and a half after I’d like to get moving. Maybe it was because of this little fella:



Pretty cool, huh? Yeah… not really; this guy was fearless. Most squirrels that I have dealt with will run away before you can even make a move towards them. Not this guy; the fact that I’m 100 times bigger than he was made no difference. He was clearly interested in my oatmeal:



I’ve never seen a squirrel at this range. I could have reached out and grabbed him easily; at one point I thought he may even try to jump on me. What a jerk. He settled for a ball of oatmeal packages, took them up the tree and proceeded to shred them into 2000 pieces. Did I say I liked everyone I met in Arkansas? I’m sorry, I forgot this little nutsack. I guess the people in Arkansas are so nice that the squirrels have taken advantage of it. I will look for this guy the next time I’m in the Ozarks and may even purchase a nice .22 just for him.

Anyway, I saw these guys around the park several times yesterday, but didn’t know that they were riding:



…until the next morning. They were doing 600 miles a day moving towards Colorado. The guy I spoke with loved that trailer. I doubt I had enough luggage to fill up half of it…different strokes for different folks I guess.

Bam, scored a new bungee net at the local motorcycle shop:



I thought the story of my trip would maybe earn me a discount or some good advice…nope. I barely got a response. Kind of like this:



Anyways, moving onward and looking westward:



Obvious rain clouds, but luckily I had about 15-20 miles to travel due north to pick up the trail where the sun was shining:



If you like fast gravel/dirt roads, the Ozarks are chock full of them. Seemed to be the best area I came across for dual sporting on the east coast:



With multiple choices of terrain:





I was happy here:



Then comes the big story of the day. I’m trying to make this as brief as possible because I do not have any pictures (I do have video of the entire debacle, but I don’t have the software to edit it yet). Remember my GPS routes being off? They tell me at what point I need to make a turn, but they don’t really say which road/trail that I need to take. Imagine a road that splits into 3 and then eventually comes back together. That’s what happened here:



All three roads would have taken me to my next via point, so I chose the shortest. (Note to self, the shortest road will probably be the most difficult). You can see above where I had to turn around when the contour lines start to get really close together. To make a long story short, I fail to climb the mountain, drop the bike 3 times, almost make it to the top (where it would have been easy riding), turn around and come back. My second fall had trapped my leg between the ground and my bike. For a split second, I thought that this was where I was going to spend the night. But, luckily, I had enough movement to get the bike up enough to remove my leg and get out.

At this point, I wasn’t sure which way the real TAT trail went and I thought I had picked the right trail. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard about this section in the previous ride reports. My pride took a beating. It took a few more miles for me to convince myself that I had made a “shortcut” and that it was no big deal. But being so close to the top of that mountain and not making it still hurt. Not only will I bring a .22 for that jerk of a squirrel next time, I’m also going to bring a lighter load and conquer Pilot Knob.


Anyways, I retreat for now and hit the big wide fast stuff. They spend a lot of time maintaining the roads:



I finally come up to the Ozark café and they had my favorite on special:



Looking out from the café, I could have gotten a good picture of these two kids without a care in the world:



But, I forgot about the town drunk (the road maintenance crew up ahead told me about him, he was getting a nice 12 pack of Busch Light as I was leaving) driving off into my picture:



Oh well, here’s the road maintenance, we’re losing our trail, mile by mile:



Shortly afterwards, I meet Lloyd, Billie, Charlie, Lacy:



…extremely nice people from Missouri. I wish I had more time to talk, but I had to keep moving on. Once I exited the Ozark National Forest, things got a little more sketchy. Here is the famous Warloop Rd:



It does have a few drop-offs and rocky sections, but nothing the EXC was scared of. What was more frightening was the area around Warloop. Not somewhere I’d like to be changing a flat.

The laptop took a beating today, look at lower left corner:



But, it still worked. I found Alma and had a little mexican food:



I had 2 or 3 choices of hotel/motels in Alma. One looked like a trucker joint, the Days Inn looked like Saddam Hussien’s sons’ home (like it had been obliterated with .50 caliber machine gun fire):



Or the Comfort Inn:



I obviously chose the Comfort Inn. I changed all of my oil, washed some clothes and lived luxuriously…well, at least by Alma’s standards.

Today’s stats:



Tomorrow’s plan is to attack Oklahoma’s long and straight roads and find some cheap camping.


Total mileage: 1499
Daily mileage: 168
Wildlife observed: Turtles, deer, another dead armadillo
Favorite Sight: Ozark mountain tree filled range views
Favorite Scent: I don’t smell very well, nothing stuck out
Favorite Sound: “Today’s special is Fried Chicken…[something, something, something]”
Favorite Taste: The fried chicken, of course
Favorite Feel: Out running Charlie, catching a little wheelie.
Ailments: Bruised calf from boot still, hurt my pride a little bit, gas tank took big hit, burned hole in bag, banged up laptop.

(Day 6) Late start, wet afternoon…

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Day 6
Beebe, AR to Russellville, AR

The lady at Garmin had promised me the CD that I needed to fix my routes by noon today. I “slept in” to 8am, called the front desk when I was awake and learned that the CD had not arrived yet. So, I took my time getting breakfast at Waffle house, reorganizing my luggage, changing oil and adjusting some of my controls. One thing I wanted to do was move my handlebars forward to make standing up more comfortable. In the process, I found the 10mm socket that I couldn’t find before leaving:



LMAO, I drove all the way to Arkansas and this socket never fell off. I had already replaced my socket set with another 10mm socket, so now I had two. By the way, moving my handlebars forward allowed me to stand for longer periods of time, I’m glad I took the time to do this.

My cell phone indicates that I called Garmin at 9:49am to get a tracking number for the CD. A representative at Garmin says, “That CD is on backorder, it will be 2-3 weeks before it ships out”. I’m speechless.

I start packing up immediately and looked at the radar. Rain was going to be unavoidable. A late start and a wet ride, wonderful. 1st picture of the day:



And then we get into the good stuff, but rain was definitely on the horizon:



This is where I run into Bernie and LeJean, they were just simply “riding around”:



LeJean reminded me of Bill Clinton, maybe it’s an Arkansas thing? I asked them if it was going to rain (they were traveling away from the dark clouds, I was headed directly towards them), they both said very sarcastically and almost in unison, “Nahh, no way, it’s not going to rain…nope…lol”.

At this point, I put my camera, phone and wallet in ziploc bags and rode off into the wet stuff. And just as expected, the rain came. Nice and steady; great for the crops, but not so great to ride in. Soon afterwards, I see a man moving from his tractor shed near the road, to his ranch house further back. I see an open carport, so I press my luck and drive into the man’s driveway. He waves me in and I park under the carport. Meet Gene:



Gene, his wife and his mother were the nicest people I met throughout the entire trip. I’m pretty sure I could have stayed overnight and would have had dinner and breakfast. And, if time hadn’t been an issue, I may have let this happen. But, I decided just to wait for the rain to settle down a bit and head on.

I thought I would be able to take a few pictures through the ZipLoc bag, but they didn’t turn out too well:



The rain stopped for a bit and I stumbled upon some awesome cloud formations. But, unfortunately, my camera was unable to capture any of it. I’ll post it anyway, because it was one of my favorite sights:



I ate lunch here:



I was completely wet, and getting my “water proof” gloves off and on was a chore. I just took my time and enjoyed the rushing waters before the rain started to pick up and I moved on again:



Here was my first grand view of the Ozarks:



I looked for campsites all throughout the Ozark National Forest. I found a few places, but they were all unmarked. Not wanting to do any illegal camping, I searched my GPS for the nearest State Park which turned out to be on Lake Dardanelle, about 20 minutes south of the trail:



(Remember the bungee webbing hanging off the back of the bike)

As I was staking the tarp out, I got a little lazy and missed the stake with the rock I was using. However, my hand did not miss:



That first aid kit that had been “getting in the way” of all of my more important stuff previously, was now a very welcome site. With the cut being directly in the crease of my hand, it took a few extra days to heal.

One bad thing lead to another, about the time I took this picture of the park headquarters (Arkansas has some really nice State Park facilities):



… I felt a minor disruption somewhere in my drivetrain. It went away immediately, so I thought nothing more of it. More on that later…

I drove around Russellville for awhile and came across a Whatta-burger. I have heard great things about this place from a couple Texans, so I figure I’d give it a shot:



Let me tell ya, What A Burger!... no, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but still a pretty good burger. The milkshake was better.

But, it all had hit the spot. I was enjoying the town, making small talk with all the laid-back country folk and soaking in the beautiful weather. Then I find this in the parking lot as I was rolling the bike backwards:



In the brake caliper you’ll see what’s left of my bungee netting. Flippity-flopping, gee-digity, pooper-scooper. I got what I could out but decided to take it back to camp to get the rest out:



It turns out that park landscaping around my campsite was a great bike lift. I had to take the whole caliper off and remove the pads to get everything out. Minor inconvenience.

I was in the bivy before sunset. Tomorrow’s plan is to find a new bungee net and to simply make it to Alma, AR before heading into Oklahoma.

Total mileage: 1331
Daily mileage: 162
Wildlife observed: Deer, rabbits, birds
Favorite Sight: Ozark panoramic views
Favorite Scent: The ol’ sniffer just doesn’t work as well as it used to.
Favorite Sound: Older couple at Whatta-Burger: “Where are you traveling from?” “Charlotte, NC” “Oh my, where are you traveling to?” “I’m trying to make it to Oregon” “OH MY!”
Favorite Taste: Whatta-burger milkshake
Favorite Feel: Getting my wheel back on
Ailments: Small cut to hand, holding up well otherwise.

(Day 5) Slowly losing elevation...

Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Day 5
Sardis, MS to Beebe, AR

…and that could only mean one thing, big waters ahead. Actually, once I passed the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was expecting I would slowly ascend as I moved westward; this was a pleasant surprise to be close to sea level so far inland.

After riding over 300 miles of backroads yesterday, I caught a few extra winks of sleep this morning and was rolling shortly after 9am:

Eastward:


Westward:


Dirt:


One of my original plans was to take a picture of each city sign that I saw. Here is Crenshaw, MS:



I was then going to make a video to the tune of Johnny Cash’s version of “I’ve been everywhere”. This probably would have added another couple days to my trip, they were everywhere. I scraped the idea. (I looked up the lyrics and there are a few places that are on the trail: Oklahoma, Tennessee, Richfield, Colorado and …Jellico! A few other places are very nearby: Tulsa, Little Rock and Crater Lake. Did I just plan another trip?)

It’s about 200ft in elevation where I was traveling in the Mississippi River Basin. I could watch the altimeter for miles and it would not change. I started to wonder if big muddy would change directions on me. It seems entirely possibly.

Capturing the vastness of the rice fields on camera is impossible, but here’s my best shot:





Find the crop duster:



My first welcome sign and I only get half of it:



It’s big, it’s muddy:



Goodbye Mississippi:



Hello Helena, AR:



Al waved me over and asked me if I was riding the Transam Trail:



Yes, sir, I am. Al said he sees a lot of riders coming thru. Some standing, some driving too fast and sometimes he’ll see 2 or 3 groups a week.

All I left behind here and on most parts of the trip was simply a puff of dust:



Shade was sparse; here was a big oak tree out in the middle of nowhere. It kind of reminded me of “The Shawshank Redemption” when Andy was describing to Ellis on where to go when he got out:



So I ate lunch there at about 1pm local time. Still had a little ways to go before reaching Beebe, so I marched onward, bring on the levees:



Not all of the roads were traveled on very often, but still easily passable for the Orangutan:



I was wondering when I’d cross I-40, this is westbound traffic:



Here is my westbound path from that point:



Time for another granola bar; I sat at this church and watched a crop duster work a field to the south. I thought about the cemetery behind me and how creepy it would be to find [My Name] and [My birthdate], 1878 – [Today’s Date], 1908 on a gravestone. I knew it was back there, but it would have been a long and hot walk in boots to find it. I moved on after the crop duster show:



I roll into Beebe, AR, find the hotel that Garmin was sending the GPS CD to and I got a room. I wonder how and why this privacy lock was broken? No privacy for me:



Turkey and swiss sandwich at “The Grill”:



I actually met a crop duster pilot here and learned that his pilot license was very limited. It sounded like a cool job until someone else walked in and was talking about how someone had recently gone down in one of those planes.

Laundry time again. One of my pet peeves is when “your” is used when “you’re” is the correct spelling. But, when “you’re” is used when “your” is the correct spelling, I just laugh:



Made good time in the straight flats today, and although possibly obtainable, the max speed is inaccurate once again:




Total mileage: 1169
Daily mileage: 187
Wildlife observed: Remarkably few wild animals today, I did see a fat deer who didn’t “run like a deer”, maybe pregnant? Maybe old?
Favorite Sight: Rice Fields and crop dusters
Favorite Scent: Nothing in particular but the incense in hotel lobbies is obnoxious.
Favorite Sound: The KTM running strong and Al from some farm near big muddy: “They just dumb”
Favorite Taste: Eh, I guess the grilled turkey and swiss from The Grill in Beebe.
Favorite Feel: Letting the back wheel get loose accelerating out of the gravel turns
Ailments: Nothing in particular, it seems sleeping like a rock has helped a lot with any pains. Do have some strange bug bites left over from Tennessee though.