Day 5 – The Ozark Route – Adventures of an Old Man

Today, based in our landing spot of Clarksville, AR, we set out on a 279 mile tour of the Ozarks. I copied this route from one an avid writer who had posted the route on the net. Lingering night time rain caused us to push out our desired early start until after 9AM. But, once on the road we didn’t experience any additional rain.

We both needed gas and hoped to find some along our route. That proved difficult. And, not only were there few gas stations along our route, the one we did not sell 93 octane gas which our bike require. So – we compromised. The station we found fairly early on only sold 87 octane gas but we were able to purchase a bottle of octane booster to up (by how much we had no idea). But it did keep us from running out and neither of us could detect engine knocking so we survived. The little store we bought the gas and booster is shown below. Oark – not Ozark – Arkansas.

Ozark bonus shot – A rusted out Chevy Vega station wagon on a pole!

The ride itself was, well, okay. We have gotten used to all the great mountain roads we have in Virginia, Western North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were plenty of curvy – if not particularly well maintained – roads but the tallest peak is just over 2,500 feet and overlooks and vistas we all but non existent. Also we seem to miss a couple of the treats we expecting to see, like Americas oldest functioning general store and the motorcycle tree (a tree with motorcycles hanging from it). But, all in all, a decent ride

I did take a good bit of video with my GoPro during the ride, but it needs to be edited and that takes more time than I have left tonight. Will compile videos in a later post. We did cross an interesting single lane bridge, pictured below.

And, yet one more time, dinner turned out to be the highlight of the day. Back to the Crosswinds Restaurant in Clarksville. Food below. Marshall got chicken breasts grilled with bacon, with sauteed squash and cabbage and I went with the chopped steak smothered in onions, peppers and mushrooms along with the cabbage and squash.