A little about our Arkansas trip

We had caught up with things on the farm and decided to take a short trip up to Eureka Springs. It was July 19th 2006 and the temperature was pushing 90. We could go up in the mountians and cool off. On the 20th, Joe, Betty Jane, Theresa and I left home, headed to Indianola to meet up with Mike and Carolyn, and continued to Greenville to cross the river into Arkansas looking for that cool air.



Everything went as planned. To Pine Bluff, temperature rising, across to Malvern, still rising, on into Hot Springs. Ah, surely the temp would drop at any minute. Boy were we wrong. The thermometer had been rising ever since we left home and now at 3:30 it was showing 104. What made it worse was fresh black asphalt. Where was all that cool air we were headed for?



We stopped in Russellville to spend the night. Everybody got off to find cool air in the motel. Everybody except Carolyn, she had got so hot she couldn't get off the bike. After supper and a good nights sleep in a cool room we were good to go on the next leg of our trip.



Next morning we looked at the map I had planned for the trip. We would go hwy 7 north to Harrison with detours east and west of 7 to see the country. We took 164 over to Hagarville then up 123 which is a scenic winding road. Hwy 123 runs into hwy 7 at Pelsor and get back off at Lurton. This stretch of road has a lot of curves. We had stopped to rest , also Joe "had to go", and we could hear a log truck coming. You could hear the truck shifting gears and using his jake-brake as he was coming through the mountains. I said we need to kennel-up to stay ahead of the truck. We came down one side of a mountain that looked like straight down. The road had, I think, 6 different 360 turns and I couldn't figure out how that log truck was going to make it.

We made it to Mount Judea a little community with a school and an old grocery- gas-eating all rolled into one place. As we talked to the lady who own the store the log truck came by. She said it was a common thing for the trucks to wreck coming down the mountain and advised us not to be in the way. She was a transplant from central Florida, having come up here for vacation for several years, she saw this place for sale, soldout in Florida, bought this and was happy as a lark.



After leaving Mount Judea we stopped at Marble Falls, took the tour went through Harrison and hit 62. Before we got to Eureka Springs we saw rain. Pulled into a monument engraving place and waited out the rain. The folks there were nice and let us park our bikes in their shop.



At Eureka Springs we took in as many of the sites we could. The following morning we went to Beaver Lake Dam which had some scenic roads. We left Eureka Springs down hwy23. We ended up in Ozark where Carolyn had to have her a watermelon. Mike strapped it on the back and off we went. We stopped at some scenic out-look on the mountain looking at the valley below. While parked we heard motorcycles coming. All of a sudden we heard someone yell out to the others in their group,"Look , they got a damn watermelon on that bike". Well we went across to Russellville to spend the night, with watermelon in tow, went up in the lounge area , ask for some plates and ate that damn good watermelon. We did share it with the other people in the lounge.



Next morning we decided to cut our trip short and head home to check on the crops. Stopped in at Lakeshore Cafe at Lake Village to eat lunch. Saw some fellow riders there from Cleveland we knew. Got home early afternoon.



There were a lot of places we would have like to gone to but that's for another road trip.



Till later.