Gary and I are woken up by kids screaming and pots banging in the campground, which is one of the joys of camping on a nice weekend I suppose. We got up and got packed and I just had a granola bar for breakfast. Today was some of the best riding I’ve had on the trip yet. We finally got into some of the mountains of Arkansas, and went up them back down about 1500 ft before lunch, and twice more after lunch. We stopped at a gas station called “The Store” in Hector, AR and filled up, then noticed they had lunch cooking so decided to have a slightly early lunch at around 1130. The day’s special was a huge piece of ham on the bone, corn, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a roll for like $6. It was fantastic. I also had a huge can of peach tea to wash it down. We went about 70 miles NW to Oark, AR, which is apparently famous for it’s café the Oark Café. It seems to be a popular destination for motorcycle riders of all kinds due to being surrounded by the beautiful mountains. Since we’d just eaten lunch, I had some ice cream. I was happy to see that it was Blue Bell ice cream. We finished that up, then kept driving until we got to Ozark, AR where we filled up on gas again and started researching camping spots on a gas station bench. We had several old guys ride up on Harley’s over the next several minutes and talk to us, which provided interesting conversation. I found one place up in the forest that was a little bit out of the way, then another one that was perfect, but upon further research, the showers had apparently been shut down while they were lowering the lake or something, so it was a no go. Then, one of these random old guys says we should go to this state park south of town called Aux Arc state park (http://www.recreation.gov/camping/aux-arc/r/campgroundDetails.do?contractCode=NRSO&parkId=71013). I’d seen it earlier when I was researching, but it looked like it was in the middle of town so I didn’t give it much though since I’d rather be in the forest. Anyways, I check it out again after this guy’s recommendation, it looks pretty good and I’m getting tired of researching anything else, so we end up camping there for the night. It has a nice view and showers, so no complaints. As a side note, the US Forest Service really needs to update their website. Full of broken links, or things that aren’t linked. Huge lack of maps. It’ll list like 20 campgrounds, but you have no idea where they are in the forest. Also, none of those 20 are linked, so you have to google the name of each one. You’ll likely find information for them on the forest service website from google, but there was no link from the original forest service page to get you there. Not very useful.
