Why? Bugs. That's why. Arkansas at night is like something out of the Old Testament. There is a fog of bugs that decends on the place like some sort of plague. When we blasted through the state on the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Tour we were stopping every 10 minutes to scrub the dead bugs from our face shields.
Anyway... from Beebe we decided to shoot up to Heber Springs to pitch a tent. If you ever need an out of the ordinary place to go and relax for a few days... find your way there boys. Its on a gorgeous mountain lake. Its a slow... simple town. Its perfect.
All in all it wasn't that bad. The chicks at the ranger's station were hot... and we nearly got a contact high from all the folks burnin' herb around us. Coulda been worse.
We rolled out of Beebe early monday... heading into some angry dark clouds. It was the same ol' stuff for the first few hours. Lots of gravel roads... but the hills were getting longer... and the flat stretches were getting shorter. It wasn't long before we found ourselves in the Ozark National Forest riding maintanence roads and haul roads.
I have no idea what JAC did... becasue he was behind me. I just crack the throttle wide open and hung on. The KLX ate it alive. I got to the top... and waited... stunned... in front of a log cabin. Someone lived up there! I mean... we were 45 minutes from a paved road! probably an hour or more from any kind of store.
I particularly like these two pictures below. If you look at them full sized... you can find a cooling tower from a nuclear power plant in each one. The Picture on the right was taken about 15 minutes before the one on the left.
If ya find the tower in each picture... you should get a pretty good idea of the kind of ground we were covering.
A really bizarre thing happened up there... at one point.. all the trees around us disappeared.. and we found ourselves riding with insane views on each side of us. I couldn't help but get off the bike to look around a little... and that's when I realized I had 500 foot cliffs on either side of me.
Yeah... My feet got all tingly... cause I mean... dude this road was tiny. We were effectively riding the top of a ride that was all of 10 feet wide... with sheer drops on either side. A screw up here.. and they'd never find you... or the bike.
For the rest of the day we blasted through these mountain "roads"... hitting awesome creek crossings... and playing our favorite game... "splash your brother with you back tire". Its exactly what it sounds like... you find a big puddle and try to time it so you throw mud and water all over the other guy. Big fun!
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