I’m taking my time getting ready, so Gary leaves Aux Arc State Park before me to go to Walmart and hunt for supplies. I eventually get my shower and get packed up and meet him there. We launch north back into the Ozark National Forest and some great riding. Before too long we hit an optional hard section which turned out to be the most sizeable water crossing yet. I probably wouldn’t have done it if I was by myself, but we decided to do it. Gary walked some of more sensitive electronics across the creek, then we set off the crossing it. It was pretty deep and had a swift current, so we rode across with both feet down in the water and it was still pretty harrowing. Someone we both made it through without dropping our bikes under water. After that, it’s more good riding off pavement. We start seeing signs saying road closed in 4 miles, road closed in 3 miles, etc. We’re wondering how closed is ‘closed’ so we keep riding anyways until we find a bridge that has huge piles of rocks blocking it off. We get off and walk it and find out while the bridge it paved, the pavement is actually over wooden timbers, and one of the timber has rotted through making a hole in the bridge. This doesn’t seem to be a huge problem, so we move a few of the rocks and make a path to get through them and over the bridge. Another section of trail is pretty tricky, a fairly steep downhill strewn with large rocks and rock shelves. I actually dropped my bike once after hitting my skid plate on a rock then losing my footing, and the bike sloooowly went down and I couldn’t stop it. Pretty uneventful though. After making it through that, the rest of the riding was easier. Given these obstacles, our progress today was less than other days. It was getting to late afternoon when we crossed over the Illinois River near Tulequah, OK and rode right past the Eagle’s Landing campground. We were both exhausted, so we decided to camp there. I ended up getting into the river to cool off. It was crystal clear and moving pretty swiftly, but very refreshing. I wanted to take a shower, but the showers at this place were the worst I’ve ever seen. It smelled like an animal died in there, half of the showers didn’t even have handles, and the one’s that ‘worked’ didn’t have hot water. The most ridiculous part is that we were in the ‘family’ section of the campground. They also had a ‘late-night’ section, but the girls at the registration area told us that the showers there were terrible…meaning somehow there were worse showers than the ones I went into. Hard to imagine. Anyways, I didn’t take a shower, unless you count my river swim. After being chastised by river floaters for being on my laptop at the picnic table at our campsite, I went to bed.
