2015 Arkansas Motorcycle Trip
Roxanne and Tim took their second, long motorcycle trip in 2015. It was really fun as we had our friends, Fred and Karen Stumpf join us for the trip. Just as our motto for the 2014 trip, we really needed to remember that it was more about the journey because we had to constantly adjust our plans due to weather. Tropical Storm Bill made our return trip home particularly interesting!
Great River Road (Iowa)
Our first stop was in Dubuque, IA to catch the Great River Road. We actually drove the road down the west bank of the Mississippi in Iowa but do think that the east bank (Illinois side) may have been the more scenic route. We drove down to Davenport, IA for our first night stop.
Along the way, we crossed a few lakes/rivers with very nice waysides to stop and rest in!
We did have threats of rain on our way south and blamed it on Fred and Karen. To prove our point, the picture below shows that little black cloud that was always hovering over their heads!
Hannibal, MO
Hannibal is the home of Mark Twain. It is located right on the Illinois/Missouri border along the Mississippi River. Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, was a riverboat pilot. While we saw a few riverboats, there were certainly more tug boats working barges.
Since Hannibal is the place where Mark Twain lived, we had to visit the "home" of Tom Sawyer. As you can see, Fred and Tim also got persuaded into painting that famous fence!
As we stumbled through the streets of Hannibal, we could not help but grab lunch (and cheese curds) from the Badger Cheese Haus. The owner was a transplanted Wisconsinite with lots of stories to share about the cheese he sold!
Branson, MO
Tim and Karen made it clear that they were NOT country music fans but we needed to stop in Bransonso that if they were "ever" asked to go, they could respond "Nope…been there, done that!" I'm adding a few photos to prove they don't ever need to go again!
Arkansas
Tim and Roxanne had never been in the state of Arkansas and crossed into it in Mount Olivet. Hawg Heaven didn't look very appetizing! J
Eureka Springs, AR
Our 'destination' was Eureka Springs, Arkansas which served as our home base for some day trip motorcycle rides. We found a very nice Best Western hotel with a great restaurant, Myrtie Mae's Restaurant,, known for their fried chicken. We'd highly recommend it!
Eureka Springs was a cute little, arts town.
Pig Trail – Motorcycle ride
While we were staying in Eureka Springs, Tropical Depression Bill dumped up to 7 inches of rain on the Ozarks in southern Missouri overnight (June 18-19, 2015), causing flash floods that forced the evacuation of some towns and increasing the risk of major flooding along several rivers. While we were there, we repeatedly needed to review the weather forecast and replan our trip. We had so much rain that, for example, the Buffalo River jumped from 7.6 feet Thursday afternoon to 27 feet Friday evening.
On one of the days, we attempted to drive the famous "Pig Trail". This is a route that motorcycle enthusiasts seem to be attracted to. A co-worker of Tim's took the ride last year and highly recommended it. We were really excited to take the ride but after only a few miles into the trail found ourselves at an impasse. The Trail had literally washed out!!
The Arkansas news explained the road closure that we saw this way:
A portion of Arkansas 23 in Franklin County was closed Tuesday after a landslide made the lanes impassable, according to a news release from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
A slope supporting the roadbed on the east side of the highway, located north of Interstate 40, continues to slide and has caused large cracks to form in the travel lanes, rendering both lanes impassable, according to the release.
That section of Arkansas 23 will remain closed until repairs can be made, which may take several weeks. A more definitive time frame will be announced once the highway department's engineers have had an opportunity to further evaluate the slide, the release states.
The slide location is the same that closed this section of the highway in May. It was just Friday that the Highway Department announced that a single lane on the scenic road known as the "Pig Trail" was reopened.
The affected area is about 19 miles north of Interstate 40 and 5½ miles north of Cass. While only 700 linear feet of roadway is impacted, the closure includes 3.2 miles of Arkansas 23 between the south end of the Mulberry Mountain Lodge and the north end of Fly Gap Road, according to the release
While I talk about all the rain, our days (7am until about 4pm) were absolutely gorgeous. We enjoyed taking motorcycle rides every day without interruption at all by the weather.
Each day we took day rides for 5-8 hours and covered 200+ miles. While we thought we'd find gas easy enough, we were fortunate to have filled up beforehand because this was the type of station that was more typical of those that we did see!
Cairo, IL / MO and Kentucky
On our trip back home, we tried to 'dodge' Tropical Storm Bill by traveling east very quickly before heading due north. Our trip brought us through Cairo, Illinois which is located at the cross hairs of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River. There is one bridge that traverses the Mississippi to bring you from Missouri to Illinois and then another to allow you to cross the Ohio River from Illinois into Kentucky. Just to say we did it, we crossed over the Ohio into Kentucky.
We have to do a shout-out to the staff at Comfort Suites in Mount Vernon, IL! We were driving due north into (and through) the path of Tropical Storm Bill where we got dumped on while driving. The Staff at Comfort Suites went out of their way to track us down and suggest that we move our motorcycles under cover for the night so they would stay relatively dry. They were awesome!
Dixon, IL – boyhood home of Ronald Reagan
We actually made two trips through Dixon, IL. On our trip north, the bad weather was threatening us and thus we traveled straight through it. After having a night to rest and reflect, we realized that we needed to allow Karen a chance to see "the Arch" even though we were forced to detour around St. Louis due to the weather and also to visit the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the 40thPresident of the United States; Tim did not know that he was born in Tampico, Illinois!
Freeport, IL
Our final night on the road brought us to Freeport, Illinois because hotels in Rockford were scarce and expensive (maybe there were soccer tournaments or something although the only thing we heard about was a BMX bike race). We found a very nice hotel in downtown Freeport and enjoyed our evening ice cream at the Union Dairy.
Freeport was the location of a very famous debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Notice that Roxanne could not let either candidate get the last word in!
