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DAY
TWELVE COMMENTARY
Do you believe in miracles? It may be that The Chief (tm) now does.
Yes,
it is true that the first miracle of the trip was that I didn’t perish
during the downpour back on Day Two. But more to the point -- here in
the town of the Christ
of The Ozarks statue and the Great
Passion Play
-- we had yet another little miracle occur, and it was really something
special.
To wit: not one day after boasting about how the
water hydration pack was to become a staple of every upcoming daily
trip, wouldn’t you know it, but I apparently went and left it on top of
the trailer whilst pulling out of the parking lot? So after about forty
minutes wasted on (1) an unsuccessful attempt to find a
Eureka Springs bumper sticker for the trailer -- yet another good idea
gone down the tubes, and (2) a visit to a gas station with
what turned out to be a broken air hose, because the woman using it
moments before announced that she had broken it, but not before I spent
a good five minutes backing up the rig into a single parking space, and
making sure that the valves on both tires were accessible...
…only then did I realize that I did
not have the backpack.
This meant I would have to backtrack and see if it might have fallen
off the trailer, because the only other place I would have left it was
on the motorcycle’s seat, and I was sitting on that already and would
have been even more uncomfortable than usual if the pack had been
underneath me.
A quick trip through town, staring at the
curb along the opposite side of the street, met with no success. I went
down the steep hill to the parking lot, figuring it probably had fallen
off right there, but it was still nowhere to be seen. With great
difficulty I managed to dock the Pork Chop Express (the new name for
the
rig -- Ed.)
on the hill in front of the hotel, but the front desk
reported no such item turned in to Lost & Found.
Resigned
to now being without it, at least until I could find a place
to
purchase another one, I re-mounted the trusty steed and pointed it up
Main Street for the last time. And just moments after I let out the
clutch, what did I happen to notice in a spot I wasn’t
really even
focusing on? This.
To whoever noticed it (in the
street, I presume) and chose to put it there for hopeful eventual
discovery by its owner -- me -- all I can say is THANK YOU.
Before
leaving town for real I fully rode the Historical Loop, and despite
being caught behind a diesel-belching tour bus (terrible-smelling,
though -- incredibly -- not so bad, pollutant-wise) I’m glad I did. I
saw
more old buildings, hotels, libraries and houses erected within the
confines of sheer rock walls, or on narrow, steep streets, and even
other natural occurrences such as The
Grotto on Dairy Farm Hill. Route
62 out of town was wonderful, with sweeping curves, elevation changes,
and wonderful views (such as Inspiration Point), thus adding more
checkmarks to The Chief (tm)’s ever-lengthening tally of positives in
the state of Arkansas. There were also several worthwhile-looking
places of lodging and dining/beveraging, although these would not be
within walking distance of downtown, depending on how hard you planned
on hitting it.
Not too much further on, I must admit that
cheated: I snuck a few miles up to Seligman,
MO (not AZ), solely to say
that I visited that state! But the swing paid dividends, as I saw a gas
station offering fuel at just $3.74 per, at which rate I filled up the
bike and topped off the spare gas can. Upon going inside to pay --
because you did not have to pay outside -- I noticed a stack of
cardboard cases of tomatoes for sale. Now, The Chief (tm) has always
hated, hated
tomato juice, or
tomato soup, but somehow happens to love tomatoes in their natural
form. So before the gal could make change for me, I grabbed one that
was bigger than
my fist and placed it on the counter. She handed me
back exact change for the gas, so I said, “Oh, and also the tomato,
because how could I resist?” To which she replied something along the
lines of, “Oh, we have about fifty pounds there, so just take it.” So,
rather than pay $1.20/lb. for a two-pound tomato, I walked out of there
gratis, and subsequently carried that thing across three states. It
would have been four, but I finished the whole thing that same evening.
Right
back over the border into AR, there was a motorcycle accessory store
featuring many of the Important Items a long-distance biker might need,
at prices perhaps above internet levels, but still far below what you’d
expect to see at the dealerships. Alas, I needed nothing, but the place
sure agreed when my man Pals said that zip ties are a
staple of life -- they had a vase of the things sitting right at the
cashier station. Candy and gossip mags at the supermarket; zip ties at
the motorcycle shop.
The road continued to weave through
farmlands, and eventually some small towns, and then the town of
Bentonville, which was more built-up and crowded with traffic. Here, I
must admit, I was compelled to hit the horn for the first time and
flash the finger to some a$$hole whose focus on his phone call
directly jeopardized the safety of The Chief (tm). People, this simply
cannot be tolerated. A few miles later, just before making the left
onto I-540, I sat in the turning lane for literally ten minutes, but
because of this I was able to snap this shot.
Once shaking
itself out from short stretch with several interchanges for
Bentonville, even the experience on I-540 became rather pleasant, with
the road crossing long bridges spanning broad, scenic valleys.
Just
short of the Oklahoma border
I thought it would be a great idea to use
the dry erase markets I had brought along, for a different, aborted
purpose, to jot notes directly onto the plastic map window atop my tank
bag. On straight stretches is would be no problem to briefly take both
hands off of the bars to uncap the pen, but then I thought, hey, why
not just clip it to the bag, then pull it out one-handedly when I need
to, right? Wrong. I had apparently managed to buy pens without clips on
the caps.
Somewhere in Pocata, OK, a station offered
gasoline at $3.71, the lowest I’d yet seen, though I did not need any.
Not knowing the exact location of my destination, only the town it was
near, I tried to have the GPS direct me to another nearby town (because
of course it did not recognize the closest one). Naturally, it also
tried to send me on a route about twenty-five miles longer than
necessary, which was perplexing because the moment it sensed I was
completely ignoring it, the thing proposed another, far more direct
route -- the one it should have proposed in the first place. Maybe it’s
no coincidence that the thing has a woman’s voice?
Getting
closer to the campground, the air turned much cooler, the roads turned
wet and the clouds very ominous. As much as I thought I might want to,
I had to decline to pick up a young female hitchhiker because the Pork
Chop Express had no more weight capacity to give!
Mercifully
picking up a cell phone signal, with the help of a nice Parks Service
woman I was able to turn onto the road leading towards the Cedar Lake
Campground in the Winding Stair National Forest. A few miles in there
were a few homes, including the camp store, in which I had a helpful
conversation with two guys regarding campsite selection strategies. One
of the gents axed where I was from, and I said NYC via Boston, which he
said clinched it, because he thought I might have been Irish! Now
THERE’S one I hadn’t heard before. It was here that I learned that I
had somehow missed a series of violent thunderstorms that had pelted
the area for the previous thirty minutes.
The campsite area
was well-marked, but somewhat confusing, as I could not determine
exactly where my reserved spot was. That turned out not to be a
problem, as an older gent (who lives with his wife in the campground,
and who acts as the Park Ranger of sorts) gave me the lowdown, and
helped me select this
site. I was glad to be getting back to my
“frontiersman” roots after several days in hotels, although by the
dinnertime picture, you can see that I wasn’t roughing it entirely, as
few outdoorsman pop open a $135 bottle of Robert Mondavi’s finest
Cabernet, the Tokalon Vineyard Reserve, to go with along with that
evening's Moosilaukee
Goulash (?) People, lemme tell ya:
after carting that bottle around for the previous two weeks -- and
storing it for the previous several years -- the time just felt right.
And although the Goulash doesn’t easily lend itself to identification
by name alone, it was very tasty, and represented the last of the food
selections that I hadn’t yet tried. I’ve got news for you: the choices
I had made from the “Campmor” website, based completely upon the effort
to keep sodium levels reasonable, could not have been any better. Each
of the dinner selections were very good -- and this, despite the
“Spaghetti Soup” incident of Day Three -- and the two breakfasts were
very good as well, although I could say I preferred one over the other.
There’s no doubt that I got lucky with these things because I actually
look forward to eating them!
I did momentarily wish I was
back in a hotel when I saw the sign warning about bears, and
rattlesnakes & cottonmouths (“not dangerous, although
poisonous”,
the sign said. Uh, come again?) It also said to carry a flashlight
while walking around on “warm nights” so as to be able to see the
slitherers down there in the grass. Man, I thought, the Shreveport KOA
had nothing on this place when it came to snake risk!
After
setting up the tent, I went to the ranger-guy’s large, fifth-wheel
trailer to see if he had change of a twenty with which to pay the
self-pay station. He said I could pay him directly, and while he put
together the particulars his wife handed me a hummingbird feeder (in
the shape of Texas -- a gift from friends) and asked me to hang it on
the trailer’s awning. A long reach, but once in place, I noticed the
several other feeders on a nearby tree, and boy did those birds take a
fancy to the sugar/water mix contained therein. Not easy to get a
picture of one of the birds in flight -- here's the best one.
With enough
time and even more big plans, I set off to go for a run for the first
time in almost three weeks. It didn’t go all that well -- I cut my loop
short just one mile out, down from the anticipated two -- but at least
I
got something in. Oh, and FWIW, the area was very hilly; since I’d
started running in Myrtle Beach back in January, the steepest incline I
had to deal with was probably the “ramp” down from a sidewalk to the
road surface, so almost this entire route represented my very own,
ongoing, Heartbreak Hill...
Another big plan involved the
first use of the camp
shower bag, which had resisted easy testing back
in the safety of the bathtub in Surfside Beach, thanks to a kinked
hose. Filled with five
gallons of water and left to warm in the setting sun, two hours of
exposure brought the temperature up to a comfortable level, so I
do believe the directions which suggest that three hours in direct
sunlight can heat the water until it is almost too hot! I used the bag
to freshen up after the run, and found that just half of its capacity
was more than enough for a good, cleansing shower. Finally, I used one
of the lines I had brought to set up a
clothesline, rinsed out all of
my clothes from the ride that day in the spigot, and hung them up in my
best effort to bring the local property values down.
When
I visited the bathhouse to remove the ol’ contact lenses -- still going
strong after having been worn twelve hours a day for the last two weeks
-- there was a tiny tan/orange frog hanging out along the back wall. I
thought it over and then, using my snake-detecting flashlight,
encouraged the little guy to return to the wilderness where he
belonged. I figured that, even if he liked the dampness of the interior
of the building (from the showers, etc.), he couldn’t possibly have
enough access to food in there, so he was best back outside. Opinions,
comments, concerns?
Whilst doing some web page updating
after dinner, I discovered that the laptop apparently cannot recognize
the mix CD’s I burned, which is great, because it makes me glad I
bothered
bringing them.
Oh, and while looking at a map website and considering my route for
tomorrow, I noticed that there are two towns called Paris and
Clarksville, near each other in very similar alignment, in both
Arkansas and Oklahoma. Listen, people, whatever happened to originality?
Boy,
is it dark out here in eastern Oklahoma. Yes, there are a handful of
lights near the bathhouse, but that’s behind several rows of trees from
me, and without my headlamp on I can barely see a thing. Too bad it’s
partially cloudy up top because I’m sure the view of the stars would be
breathtaking. OK, time to wrap it up, gotta hit the sack; I
am hoping for an early departure tomorrow.
Hey, did you hear that? Is that what a bear sounds like at night? |
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