Today we had a really nice ride. We went down AR 7 to Russelville, then across 40 and went west to get on Route 309 that crosses over Magazine Mountain, at 2567' or somewhere thereabouts it is the highest mountain in the area. The road up was a narrow two lane road that was not real steep or curvy by Blue Ridge standards - but it was a good road and fun ride. The view up top is really nice, as was the lodge were we ate lunch. I didn't hit any deer - but I did have a bit of a close call. It was up into the 90's on in the valley areas and I had my visor cracked open to get some air flow.....I had the chin curtain on to keep the wind from making noises into the microphone. I had a bug hit the helmet/visor hard and come inside my helmet, and the chin curtain didn't let it drop out. I didn't worry about it too much as an earlier incident like this was just a Ladybug. After a couple of minutes the bug started crawling around by my chin, so I decided to stop and get my helmet off ASAP. By the time I got stopped....he was flying around between my face and visor.....and when I got my helmet off and looked inside - there was a white/black Bald Faced Hornet looking back at me from inside my helmet! I let him out, and then we resumed our trip.
After Magazine Mountain we headed north and rode AR23 north of Route 40, which is the real Pigs Trail. The first 12 miles was really nice - it is curvy and wooded and reminded me a lot of the section of 28 that is just south of Deals Gap. It was freshly paved and had a fresh gravel berm....which unfortunately is what was going on for the north 12 miles of the ride - they were installing the gravel berm! They had the road blocked down to a single lane for a portion....and we ended up waiting behind several cars, 2 semi's and a tandem axle dump truck full of gravel for our turn to go into the single lane. The trucks definitely slowed our progress and they kicked up a lot of dust from the fresh gravel berm.
Once we got away from the construction zone and the semi trucks were gone and we resumed our 60mph cruise.....we spotted a Bobcat run across the road in front of us......cool!
Later we went past the area where we had the deer encounter the day before, and I saw that the brush was only about 20 feet from the edge of the pavement in that area.....so I only had about 28 feet of notice the deer was headed my way - no wonder I had so little time to react.
The riding here is a bit different than I expected. The speed limit is 55mph on these roads as long as you are not in a town or school zone, and most curves are easily taken at the speed limit. When we left the campground this morning and got on AR7 - we probably went 40 miles before we came to a town with a STOP sign. The riding here covers more miles in less time than is possible in the Blue Ridge area - but the curves are also a bit more open and nobody is going to be dragging pegs on most of the curves....there are a few local roads that are very challenging as they go up/down the mountains - but that lasts for a very short distance and does not go on for 13 miles like it does on Moonshiner 28 south of the Highlands. So far I have not seen any Sport bikes or even other Sport Touring bikes - most motorcycles are Harley or other big V-twins, Honda Goldwing in both 2 and 3 wheel versions, and a few Can Am 3 wheelers.
Would I come back to the Ozarks to ride? Absolutely! The roads are fun, the scenery is great, the lodging and food is very affordable, the folks are extremely nice and are very down to earth and pleasant people. The riding can be done with little or no worry about getting a speeding ticket, there is extremely little traffic on the local roads, the roads are in pretty good shape, the scenery is great, and there are very few tourists here this time of year (Evidently the area has a lot of kayaking and canoeing in the spring when the rivers are flowing high). I asked a local woman about the weather - she believes that the wet weather goes away by the end of June in normal years.....we would have to confirm this before we schedule a group trip.
These cabins appear to be a bit nicer and can sleep up to 6 people in 2 of them......4 in the other one. This is about 6 miles south of Jasper and right on Route 7, and they have a great view of the sunset each evening....or run across the road and down to the restaurant to see the sunrise each morning!
http://www.cliffhouseinnar.com/cabins/
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