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3 days in Arkansas 03/11-03/13

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Nov 17, 2004
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Location
Flower Mound
Pictures and video pending...

Wabbit & I managed to get Friday off from work, and we got on the road a bit after the morning rush hour, headed north to Oklahoma. After a lunch stop in Antler, OK in a little local joint that only said "Cafe" on the sign, we headed up through Clayton, on to Talihina to start our run on the Talimena Drive.

Talimena was a whole lot of fun, and really made me glad I'd switched from a cruiser to something sportier. It still would have been fun otherwise, but it was nice to be able to take advantage of some really sweet little curves. With tires already well warmed up, and nice clean pavement, we quickly learned how to translate the yellow 20, 25 30, 35mph warning signs into maintainable entry speeds. Unfortunately that also meant we forgot to pull off at stops along the route and take in the scenery. Sometimes you just get on a rollercoaster and don't want it to end.

The fun came down a notch not long after we hit the Arkansas end of the ridgeline, when the pavement texture changed, and had a lot of loose rocks. Not so bad on the straights, but in the turns it tended to clump up in the center of the lane, between the cager tracks. We had more than a few moments where we found outselves wider in the turns than intended because you couldn't tell the gravel from the pavement until you were right on it. I'd advise anyone taking this trip to slow it down once the pavement texture changes, and stick to either the inside or outside tire track on the curves.

There are plenty of scenic vistas along the route. Most are paved, but a few are just gravel pits of varying textures and depths. If you're going to pull off and take a break, watch your entry speed.

Coming down the east end of the ridgeline into Mena, Arkansas we grabbed a little gas and got back on the road for out hotel in Mt Ida. If you're a light sleeper, I wouldn't recommend the Royal Oak Inn. The walls provide a barrier to the weather, but you can pretty easily carry on a conversation with the person in the next room without picking up the phone. Phones are another story. Nextel, at least, has no footprint in the area, and Wabbit's phone was hit or miss sometimes.

Mt Ida is a fairly stereotypical little rural mountain town. The sidewalks roll up early at night, but a few little restaurants stay open as late at 10 or so. We took some local advise and tried a pizza place that was nearly empty, and it wasn't bad. Apparently tipping is not common there, because when I tipped the waitress she looked at me and said "This is for me?" like she'd never had a tip in her life.

And that was it for day one... Saturday we'd planned to take a casual ride of about 200 miles or so, but we went a little over. I'll let Wabbit tell that one.

8-)
 
Here's a teaser.

talimena.jpg


I will edit the video when I get some time. Or I could post the raw 2 hours of video I took, but I think that may take a while to download. :twisted:
 
View from the top.

Very cool panoramic image

Click to download and scroll to the right. Don't let explorer shrink the image for you. View it full size and you can see the lake off in the distance.

Its almost like you're standing on top of the mountain in the middle of the road. :mrgreen:



Which way to go now? Downhill or Uphill?
dh_uh.jpg
 
:tab Wabbit, that is a very cool pic, but it is HUGE!! The forum image resize feature does not work for every and all browsers and such large images really screw things up for those folks. Please post images wider than 500 pix as a link so it will come up in a new window. Also, it save folks the time of downloading it if they don't want to view it while viewing the rest of the thread.

:tab That stretch of road in the smaller images has to be the most photographed part of the byway, hehe. It is just too cool looking when you approach it on the bike.

Adios,
 
RIDE REPORT: Saturday

Saturday began around 9 am. The ride was planned for 260 miles with a provision to cut it shorter if needed. Saturday ended up being almost 300 miles.

http://cracked-egg.com/triumph/map.jpg
Click to download the route map.

The yellow line on the map was the planned route, the blue line was the actual route.

On Saturday we left the motel and headed east on 298. This was a lightly travelled fast paced road. It wound through low hills with a fair amount of 40 and 50 mph turns. Not terribally exciting, but very good for warming up the tires.

From 298 we turned north on HWY 7. This was an excellent road. My personal favorite of the trip. Hwy 7 winds north through the Ouachita National Forest. The road cuts across the ridge lines and winds up and downhill. The pavement was absolutely smooth and the road has pretty much every kind of curve from fast 50mph sweepers that we took between 70-80 all the way down to tight 20 mph turns that we took around 40mph. I'm sure a more skilled rider could do a fair amount of knee dragging out there. The only minor downside to the road was the traffic from cagers taking in the scenery. It wasn't terrible, but because of the abundance of turns it is hard to pass safely. We ended up pulling over and letting some distance form between us and the cagers.

Pic from Highway 7
hwy7.jpg



Hwy 7 continues north into the Ozarks, but once we reached Ola we headed west towards Magazine Mtn. Here's a little hint if you follow our route. Get gas or food in Danville, there really isnt anything else until you get off the mountain.

Magazine Mtn. was very scenic. Aparrently it is the highest point in Arkansas and part of the Ozark mountains. Hwy 309 takes you to the top of the mountain. On our way up we got caught behind a row of about 10 cruisers potatoing up the mountain. At first it was a little annoying to have to take such as slow pace up the mountain. After we hit the first 15 mph hairpin turn with tree branches in the road we were happy to take a slower pace. Continuing up the mountain I think we hit 3 very tight hairpin turns and a good bit of road debris and loose road surface. At one point there was a tree branch completely blocking the left lane. Once we reached the top the cruisers pulled off to take pictures and re-attach chrome pieces. We continued on down the other side of the mountain in search of lunch. Part way down we stop at a scenic overlook to take pictures and met up with a guy and his g/f or wife on a cruiser. They were locals and recomended we eat at the Grapevine in Paris Arkansas. We headed down the mountain at a slow pace (again with the loose junk in the road) and stopped for lunch at the Grapevine.

The Grapevine had pretty good homestyle food. I had a large bar-b-que sandwich on their homemade toast. It was pretty good. A little different style than texas bar-b-que. While at the Grapevine we contemplated reversing our route and heading back towards Hwy 7 since it was so much fun and we missed out on some of the good turns because of cagers. Instead we decided to try using the GPS to wind through some of the smaller roads in Arkansas and see what we could find.

This is where things got interesting:

We headed west from Paris towards Booneville. From there we planned to take some small roads to cut through to Hwy 80. As we rode down a side road we passed through these huge gates on either side of the road, then set back from the road a little was the Human Development Center (the Sanitorium) The GPS told us to turn on Old Sanitorium road (that's not a joke, that was the name of the road). Old Sanitorium road started behind the electrical plant for the Sanitorium and was not paved as the GPS said it was. I went about 100 ft down the road and decided to turn around, but I had my bike facing downhill in the dirt without enough room to turn and I couldn't walk it backwards up the hill. SleepyWeasel and I ended up having to drive down a little further until we could turn the bike with the nose facing up hill. We decided not to head down Old Sanitorium road. SOmething about a dirt road in Arkansas named Old Sanitorium road sounds like the setting for a horror movie (You've got a pretty mouth boy).

We then turned around and back tracked. Sleepy Weasel saw another road that seemed to go in the direction we wanted to go. We checked our GPS's and it said the road was paved and it connected so we headed down it. As we got further and further in the cars got older and dirtier. Then as we were about 10-15 miles in the pavement ended and a dirt road continued. This time we checked the gps and it said the next road was 3 miles in. I decided to go for it and we took the T-Bird and SV650 Dual Sporting. About 2 miles in we see 2 quads coming towards us. I stopped them and asked if there was pavement. They told us we would be better off turning around. So again we manage a 3-point turn on a dirt road in Arkansas and head back. You can see the 'DOH on the map. I think we did about 5-6 miles in the dirt. It was fun, but I could definately see why a lighter bike and shorter gearing would be benificial on the dirt. Oh and maybe some knobbies rather than a set of worn out street tires.

From there we back-tracked to the original route, but decided to try hwy 80 rather than 28 to cut back to the east. 80 was another decent fast paced road. Its agood road for eating some miles, but not too exciting. It was dotted with chicken farms which made me wish to smell a skunk :oops: .

From 80 we turned south on 27. 27 was nice to cap of the day. Again it cut across the ridgeline similar to hwy 7 and had a nice selection of turns. The only problem we had was the setting sun brought out the bugs. We had to stop twice to clean the visors off so we could see.

Guess thats why they call it a flyscreen!
flyscreen.jpg



As we got closer to Mt Ida the road straightened out a little and we picked up the pace. We passed a few cars, but unfortunately the faster pace and passing all the cars caused me to run out of gas and have to flip to reserve. Fortunately we got into town before I had to push it. We stopped for gas, then headed to the Mt. Ida cafe. 1 of 3 restaurants to choose from.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and checked the gps to see we had logged 295 miles.

Mt. Ida is the Quartz capital of the US or something like that. There are quarts mines all over that you can go to and dig you're own crystals. We ended up walking over to a little crystal shop across the street to look for gifts for the SO's. It turns out it is owned by a family from Switzerland. We had to wonder why someone would move from switzerland to Mt. Ida of all places. Aparently he liked to dig for quartz so maybe that was the motivation.

Anyway we went back to the hotel and watched Ace Ventura 2 and called it a night.

night.jpg

Sleepy bikes. You can almost hear the pinging of the metal contracting as it cools. :sleep:
 
That stretch of road was nice, just too much loose surface to really make it fun. It makes a good picture though.
 
I am officially jealous. I passed on that for THIS ???
Never again.

Nice roads, twisty city.
How cold were the mornings ?
@ wabbit....how worn were your tires, and how are they now ?

Thanks for the map, and the road condition info youse guys.
 
Friday was cool in the morning, but not bad at all.

Saturday was awesome. Probably got close to 80. No need for liners after about 10am. I was actually sweating inthe afternoon.

Sunday on the other hand was cold. Good thing I packed my long sleeve shirt and overpants at the last minute. JIm and I both wore overpants and layers under the jackets. We stopped and put on our rain jackets to keep the wind from finding its way in.

I had heated grips, and luckily I had some handwarmers in my tank bag that I gave to jim to slip into his gloves to keep him warm.

My tire looked like a car tire when I went up there. It is much better now. Its got some of its round profile back. I was really worried about popping the tube on the off-road stuff because the tire was so worn in the middle. Luckily it held.
 
Sounds like you guys had a wonderful trip. I've ridden many of the roads you took, but I did learn rather quickly to stick to the uh......less rustic roads....I could have sworn I'd heard banjos...... :shock:
 
http://cracked-egg.com/triumph/pan2.jpg

Here's another Panorama from Talimena. Jim is on the left talking to the forest ranger about the fires off in the distance. You can't really see them in this photo, but there were a couple of forest fires burning outside of the Ouchita National Forest.
 
Small world...I took the DS tour of Clayton last weekend and then rode the Talimena with my knobbies howling. I pulled the camper up to Robber's Cave SP with the KLR in the back of the truck. I took the pictures after about 10 miles of fire road on the ridge above Clayton with the fire tower on top.

clayton.jpg


clayton-tower.jpg
 
nice writeup. glad the weather worked out for you guys. hope to catch the next one with yall. arkansas is my favorite country.

gw.
 
http://mysite.verizon.net/sleepy.weasel/sv650/ark031305/

The other day I started to write about our trip home Sunday, but my PC locked up, and since i was at the office, I couldn't cuss about it too loud. :oops:


So Sunday's high was only supposed to be somewhere in the 50's. Luckily I decided BEFORE we left the hotel that this was a good time to test out my new Firstgear overpants. On top, though, I figured the leather jacket with full liner would be enough over a t-shirt. I was right, for a couple of hours.

We decided to scrap our original plans for the route home, and come back the way we came. Stopping in Mena, AR for gas, we ran into a couple of guys from Dallas who had trailered in with a mildly modified VTX 1800 and a V-Star 650 Classic. We talked bikes for a while. The guy on the Yamaha had borrowed it for the trip and felt a little under-powered, so he was glad they got a chance to leave the wives behnd and ride solo. The VTX looked like it could probably carry 3 people just fine. As usual, they both loved the retro lines of Wabbit's T-Bird, but for the 2nd time of the trip somebody looked at my bike and said "Hey, is that a Buell?" In their defense, the tank bag had partly obscured the big Suzuki "S" on the tank, and the tailbags disguised the back end pretty well, too. This shot is actually from the beginning of our Talimena run on day one, but you get the picture.

talimena01.jpg
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So after telling them to drop twtex when they got home, we were on the road again. We took it easy heading up into the hills, remembering the loose crap on the road. It was still there... surprise, eh? Once we hit the decent clean pavement, we got a chance to open it up a little. I'm not sure if it was this, or our forest run on Hwy 7 Saturday that made Wabbit say he liked it better when I was on the cruiser. :lol:

Insert gratuitous twisty road shot here...
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Eventually we found a spot to pull over and Wabbit took the HUGE 360 panoramic shot while I watched for traffic. Just as he finished, along came these folks...

okieandthebandit.jpg
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They were Paul and Tina, if I remember right, from a little west of OKC, scooting along on a Bandit 1200. After they passed us, they turned back to say "Howdy" and check up on us.

okieandthebandit2.jpg
346k 800x502

As you can see, feet still up, still moving... kinda close to the edge of the asphalt, don't you think? About a bike length farther and they stopped right where the drop-off got worse, onto loose dirt. If I'd waiting about 4 seconds, I could have shown you a good picture of why it was a bad place to stop and try to put your foot down. They took the fall in stride. Before they had rotated 45 degrees off vertical, he was already laughing, and she'd ejected like a fighter pilot. Wabbit & I rushed over to help him get the bike upright since it was now lying downhill, again, on the loose stuff. We got him upright and his first thought was to hop on, again from the low side, and again, we helped pick up the bike. This time we hung on while he walked around.

okieandthebandit3.jpg
245k 800x314

As you can see, no harm, no foul. He bought the bike used and pre-scratched, so as long as there's no real damage, he's got an attitude I only wish I could have at the office. :evil:

About a mile down the road and they couldn't kep up anymore, but a mile after that they passed us while we layered up. I was glad to verify my rain jacket does indeed fit over my leather, even when I've got the liner in, plus a t-shirt and sweatshirt under it.

Getting down off the ridgeline, we stopped for lunch at some little place with a bunch of bikes out front, including the first Boss Hoss I'd seen up close. The rider was a big ol' boy, so he apparently thought he'd need the extra power of the 502ci version. With that 25 gallon tank on it, I bet he could probably go to lunch anywhere he darn well pleased withing a 30 mile radius. ;-)

I wish I'd taken in my camera. I could have shown you the bike, or the rider. Or maybe I could have snapped a candid picture of one of the town elders holding a spoon over his tea, pouring sugar on it for about 2 minutes, probably so he could honestly tell his wife he only put one spoonful in. :lol:

The rest of the ride was uneventful. We stopped in Paris. Wabbit swears they have a mini Eiffel Tower, but we never did see it. I found out Nextel coverage does not include Greenville. That's about all I can think of.

Wabbit, you got anything else?
 
There's a Tower there I swear.

101-0188_AUT.JPG



I wish we had a pic of his bike on the ground. I also wish we thought to pull out the cameras when we were on the dirt.
 
The cowboy hat is a classy touch.

The images of those twisties has me drooling.....
:clap
 
298 is a good road but if you want the really twisty technical part of it ride it between hwy9 and hwy5 think of Lime Creek Road with no lake view and no cops it was 5minutes from my garage door for 15years loved that road sharp curves elavation changes and it cuts through some timber land so almost never see another car.
 
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