MM and Marcia are on the way and ETA is 6PM.

Deb and I are going riding and I will have my helmet radio on.

Springman - If you get to the campground and we aren’t there (first trailer on right with the white canopy- spot 11 ) call me.

Weather forecast was perfect until a few days ago - now it is showing chance s of storms Wed/Thur. Maybe that is the hurricane remnants.

Springman arrived at noon and we fed him lunch and took him on a ride.

Versy was at the campground when we got back.


Mike and Marcia will be here before 8PM.

Today is Saturday and we are at the tail end of the trip.  Versy and Springman will be packing up after our Goetta and Pancake breakfast this morning, and they will be headed home.....it will take both of them 2 days of riding/driving to get home.  MM/Marcia, and Deb and I will be able to ride one more day and we will start our trip home Sunday morning.

This location was pretty much a "Mid Point" for everyone except Versy who drove about twice as far as everyone else.

The weather has been perfect with the only dampness being the morning fog that burns off by the time we get riding.  Overnight temps have been in the 60's and daytime temps are in the high 70's or low 80's - until this morning and it is currently only 52.....and the morning warm up will be a bit slow and it will be noon before it is 70 degrees.  Springman will be riding the first 60 miles across a mountaintop and will likely get a bit chilly!

The roads have been great and provided light traffic and very nice riding.  These roads are far more open than the mountain roads in the Blueridge Mountain in TN/NC and there area places  for safe passing when you do come up on slower traffic.  The pickup trucks in the area go at a speed that very often matches our speed and there is no need to pass......a few times the trucks have caught up to us!   There are sections of roads with tight curves and even tighter switchbacks that makes it impossible for passing - but with the light traffic we have been lucky enough to not get stuck behind anyone when in those spots.  There are a large number of semi trucks hauling rock and lumber on Route 7 and on Route 23 (Pig Trail) - but they drive really fast and only a couple times did we catch up to them on a hill....one pulled over and gave us room to pass and the other one was crawling up a hill and it was easy to get around.  We did come up behind a slow RV on the Pig Trail and pulled over at a Scenic View area and waited for him to get far ahead of us - but that was the only RV/Camper/Boat type vehicle and we have not been bothered by the kind of slow traffic that is so common when driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC/TN.

Yesterday afternoon when I was sitting in the campground after we ate lunch a Roadrunner bird went across the yard by our campsite - I have never seen one before but it looked exactly like the cartoon character!  I looked it up on the internet and they are in Arkansas......it was amazing how quickly it could run!

It has been a great trip!

We got home about 19:00 hrs ,   with about 1150 miles on the truck for the trip.  The bike ??? I'm not sure about . It did cross 17K abut mid week ... I'll look how much past 17K tomorrow .

Traffic was light , with no jams or extra craziness.  The Colorado did good and rode nice with the weight of the bike in the back .      
I loaded it by Dave & Deb's camp-site where the drop-off ledge is , easy and clean.

I'll get pictures up in the next few days.   I'm thinking ... cut hay  tomorrow ???  There's a week worth of chores to catch-up on ...  

Deb and I got home about 2:00 PM on Monday.  We drove from Arkansas to eastern Missouri - then drove about 250 miles today.  We will likely spend the rest of the day unpacking, doing laundry, etc.

The motorcycle got 1,076 miles of use - the truck and trailer went 1,328 miles round trip.  The traffic was light and respectful until we got to Louisville, KY and got onto I-71.......which I lovingly call the "Hateful Highway" - there weren't any weird issues but traffic was extremely heavy and it seems like there are nearly as many semi trucks as cars traveling on this highway.

The last 2 years have shown the Arkansas weather to be drier and more predictable than the TN/NC/GA mountain weather.  Last year Deb and I were there for 7 days and got 1 rainy afternoon - this year we were gone 10 days and had no rain.....maybe we were just really lucky both years.

I enjoy riding both the Tennessee/North Carolina/Georgia area for the really tight curves and relatively slow speed fun they provide - and the Arkansas roads for the lack of traffic and more open curves and hills.  The ride that we took on Saturday along AR27 seemed like we went 40 miles with only 1 or 2 STOP signs!

I have finally found some time to post photos.  I found that each year I take a few less photos.....maybe I am getting lazy or just content to live in the moment.

The Ozark Cafe was our restaurant of choice when we didn't cook in the campground.

If you didn't pay with cash and chose to use a Credit Card - they shamed you by making you use a flower pen.  Springman was the first to be victimized.

We stopped at an overlook on AR7 to take a break and enjoy the scenery.  Here is a look at the wide range of bikes on the trip.  Versy had the Savage Single, Springman had a V-Twin stuck in laterally, MMRanch had a V-Twin stuck in longitudinal, and I was riding a parallel twin.