The past couple states.

After a long 86 mile day we found ourselves 4 miles from the summit of Mt. Magazine. We had left Lake Sylvia, just west of Little Rock, earlier that morning and cycled out of the Ouchita Mountains through the Arkansas River Valley. The sun was just setting as we finally reached the top where the man at the visitor center gave us a strange look as we told him we had come up through the south entrance of Havana via bicycle. Today we met a few other cyclists who had done the same though so it didn't seem all that crazy, although they weren't carrying as much gear as us.


The state park is beautiful, laying claim to the highest point in Arkansas, boasting thirteen full-service cabins, and a brand new lodge overlooking the end of the Ouchita range and the Blue Mountain Lake. Every room in the park has a mountain view and faces the valley which is pretty cool.
Of course we can't afford that so we're camping in the picnic area but it's basically a five star hotel to us. We only have to go about a 1/4 mile for a hot shower. If we go about the same distance up the other way on the road we can eat at the lodge where we definitely stood out last night walking in the restaurant still donning our cycling attire and the smelling like we just rode our bikes up a mountain, seriously, everyone thought we were crazy. We were excited to find extremely delicious food for a decent price though, even by our standards.


Little Rock and the western Arkansas mountains was where we really began to enjoy the scenery as opposed to the monotony of farmland in the last state and a half.


We'll begin with Mississippi where everything seemed to go wrong. The road ate our tires and rattled our frames. Whoever designed the road must have only been able to think in fifteen ft. increments, as every few seconds we'd hit a crack, following a familiar pattern through the whole state. Our first stop was Tombigbee State Park, about a few hip sways south of Tupelo, Elvis Presley's birthplace. Minus the Frisbee golf course there's not a whole lot to say except the park is surrounded by a lake and doesn't allow swimming. We were stuck there for two nights thinking it was going to rain in the afternoon but the weather turned out to be quite nice and we left the next morning where we decided to wake up early and set up a good pace. After about an hour of solid riding we stopped for a water break in Nettleton and to check our bearings.





This was the start of our horrible relationship with the state of Mississippi.





According to our map the town of Nettleton did not seem to exist. To say the least we were befuddled. The road signs for our junction didn't make sense and we couldn't find our western route until... with much despair we saw behind us a road sign stating ' Highway 6, West'.
Fifteen miles, one way, wasted which of course is thirty miles total, half a normal days ride. We still needed to cover the same targeted displacement in order to get to Lake Sardis State Park, our next place to crash for the night, making the days grand total to one hundred and ten miles.
Neither of us can truly put into words our frustration at that moment of painful discovery. Along with the distance, the already dull scenery seemed to loop like a broken record, with oddly familiar long and drawn out hills. Either we were insane our the road took us through each city several times, for example one of the next way points, Pontotoc became mobile because as we cycled towards it the mileage on the road signs grew and just as we thought we had passed it another sign would appear, 'Pontotoc, next exit'.


Oxford was nice though and we re-fueled with our ceremonial hard day's pizza.
The day ended with a magnificent view from the dam of lake Sardis and the surrounding thunderclouds showering the horizon, we were fortunate to have an island of sunshine. The facilities were mediocre at best, but we discovered a free camping area provided by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is always awesome.
Since we were surrounded by storms, the most practical way of keeping all of our stuff dry was sleeping next to the "less-than modern" restroom facility as best described by a friendly park ranger.


The next day we continued on highway 315 which was supposedly a scenic byway, but the only thing that really stood out was the run down skating rink with a sign outside reading SKATEASIA! in oriental font. We came up to a confused looking cow in the middle of the road, a little worried how it would react if we tried to go around it. Much to our surprise it ran right back into its pen as Nate rode up on his bike, basically making him a cowboy on an aluminum horse.


Traveling onward towards the border the last few hills of our least favorite state thus far, opened to a new flat horizon as we dropped in to the Mississippi delta. There was no question where we were when we arrived, it went straight from hills to floodplain, and we could sense the river's presence in everything we saw. You could smell and feel the cool breeze flowing from the country's main artery.


We continued another several miles, about half a day to the river bridge, our gateway into Arkansas. Passing the casino to our right we crossed over the mighty Mississippi, with brown water churning and flowing south, river barges and tugboats fighting the current, a scene truly worthy of a song written by CCR or passage by Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn had nothin' on us.

Helena- W. Helena was rough, abandoned brick buildings that held history but nothing else, and odd looks from the locals, but I guess we really need to get over that with the way we look on the road anyway. We didn't expect the initial few hills in the town, as small as they were, just across the river and still technically in the delta. Looking at the terrain view on google maps shows Helena as a spontaneous mound along the Mississippi, maybe from river silt built up over time? We stopped again for pizza and left with full stomachs towards Marvel, Ar to stay with my (Caleb) Uncle Bobby who scouts cotton in the area and stays in nearby farmer's house for the summer to be closer to work. This stretch of Arkansas was lined with farmland as far as the eye could see and the house lay in a decent sized cornfield surrounded by tall green stalks and next to a cotton gin. We were stoked to have a bed and showers and got even more excited when Bobby brought us some killer barbecue from Jonesboro and a few much needed bicycle tubes. Our eyes closed and we fell asleep with ease, exhausted from the past few days ride.
In the morning we headed north for highway 70 to get to Lonoke in a thick cloud of mosquitoes and gnats. There had been about 20 in. of rain in the the previous month and the air was filled with quite a buzz. When we hit more of an open road a head-wind picked up and took care of the bugs but it slowed us down quite a bit and we took turns drafting behind each other just to keep an average pace. The morning ride to Clarendon was all wheat fields and grass. We stopped at a little cafe/diner there to have lunch. This was a big catfish town, as are most of that part of Arkansas seemed to be. We ordered burgers just to be safe but they were pretty impressive. Photos of some of the biggest catfish we had ever seen in our lives were tacked onto the walls, wide-smiled fisherman with record setting catches in the back of old rusty pick up trucks and front driveways. These fish were monstrous. A man sitting in the booth behind us struck up a conversation seeing the SPOT gps Nate had on his bike and we talked about cycling and travel as he told us of different places around the country where old railroads were being turned into bike paths. He was extremely nice and warned us about the road ahead out of the town and through the wildlife refuge over the White River and even offered to get a police escort or have someone drive us to the other side but we didn't want to make a hassle for anybody and attract any more attention then we already probably had in such a small town. After lunch we went on through the White River National Wildlife Refuge, home of the last supposed sightings of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Although we kept our eyes open, there was no sign of the elusive folk tale. The scenery was cool though with six miles of an ancient raised highway over the wetlands and we saw a few deer. Cypress trees rose from the swamp and created a beautiful shaded canopy with open water below, it looked like a neat place to canoe or kayak if you had a lot of bug spray. The road was definitely in bad shape and had very little shoulder but we were fortunate to have little traffic. When we got to 70 we headed west again and arrived in Lonoke around 7:30 or so where we met up with Brian, one of my dad's old college friends. As we turned down his road he met us halfway on his bike and lead us to his place where he definitely took care of us with some reeeal good lasagna and apple pie. We took some much needed showers and fell asleep pretty soon after dinner waking up in the morning to head towards little rock. Brian drove up and met us at the riverside with his bike and gave us a tour of the city, first crossing the pedestrian bridge over to the river market where we rode over and checked out the presidential library. We were to hungry to take too much time there and go inside and headed back the other way to an awesome all-you-can-eat pizza joint. We really have not gotten tired of this Italian miracle meal. Afterwards we crossed the river again and took the Little Rock River trail, a bike path that took us through the old quarry and all the way to the Big Dam Bridge where we stopped for a while, looked at the swollen Arkansas River and said goodbye as Brian had to head back. He was a great guy and we all had a good time, we had never really gotten to see Little Rock before. Afterwards we finished crossing the bridge and ventured further west towards the Ouchita Mountains. The rolling hills were nice and we both agreed that any kind of hill is better than flat ground, which sounds strange, but the elevation change just makes the ride more interesting. We passed Lake Maumelle, the main reservoir for Little Rock and stopped at the only convenience store/gas station for miles before heading into the Lake Slyvia campground in the Ouchita National forest. The campsite was our favorite so far as it sat on the edge of a babbling creek and the air was nice and cool. The shower was hot, I mean really hot to where in kind of hurt and there wasn't a knob or anything that you could adjust it with so you had to kind of dance in and out real fast, not that you had to worry about it burning you for too long though, it would only stay on for about ten seconds before it shut off and you had to push the button again like those water conserving sinks and restraunts, it was nice to be clean though. The whole area reminded us a little bit of the Lower Appalachians in Georgia and North Carolina. There was a swimming area just before the campground on the small lake that you could see through the woods from where we were set up where my dad later told me on the phone he had gone to as a kid and gotten in a good deal of trouble when he pushed his mom off the floating dock. We almost wanted to stay another day it was so nice but knew that Mt. Magazine would be awesome too, and we'd stay there for a few days and rest. The next day's ride went down through the Arkansas Valley between the Ozark and Ouchita mountain ranges along the train tracks on highway 10, when we reached Havana, the south entrance to the mountain we took a break and stocked up on food before the long climb up. It was long and slow in low gear but it felt good to reach the top of the highest mountain in Arkansas.
We've enjoyed the past few days here and have felt very welcome. The second day we were here the district superintindent, Jon Brown, came out and visited us with his son Joe,who was about our age, bought us lunch at the lodge and gave us Arkansas State Park Staff hats, which we're not going to lie, we felt pretty cool wearing around the park. He was a friend of my dad's through the park service and a really great guy. We had only met him that day and already felt like old friends. We talked about the trip, school and some of the state parks in the area and he showed us around the lodge. He even hooked us up with a key card to get into the computer room and pool, which has an indoor view overlooking the valley and a hottub. He definitley set us up and it was great meeting another one of my dad's friends, Mt. magazine has definitley been a highlight of this trip so far. There was a motorcycle convention going on at the lodge that day to so it was kind of cool checking that out. Later we said goodbye as he dropped us off back off at camp and head back to Russelville.
We've enjoyed it so much that we decided to stay an extra night and leave tomorrow. There's some awesome rock faces to scramble around,on and off some of the trails and even a few caves we found you could squeeze pretty deep into and come out on the other side of the cliff, dropping into patches of fern with huge rock ceilings and Nate even found a cool spot with some fossils. The sheer beauty of this mountain is indescribable and there are so many parts that are probably still untouched off the beaten path and worthy of exploring but we don't have enough time to see it all even with our extended stay.

We're not looking forward to Oklahoma and Northern Texas, but we have to go through them to get to the prized west, where deep canyons are calling our name.

Tomorrow we head due west as the sun sets, and taking a left at the rocky mountains.