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Arkansas


I've just left Texarkana, on the Arkansas side. On the left is the road which I will be using for th... Looks like a good road. The awning says "WE BUY PECANS". The sign names this water as a bayou. I don't think I've seen one of those before.... On the left of this picture you can see Interstate 30, which has kindly taken all the traffic off my... Looking the other way there's the railway running alongside me. Arkansas scenery. I'm surprised that a major long-distance railway line like this is single-track. Six trains passed m... The Red River, with the Interstate bridge and a pipeline bridge, and a lot of swallows. I encountere... Looking upstream, there's the railway bridge. I sat down on the end of the bridge to have a drink and found this survey marker. Hope, Arkansas (population 10095) This is where Bill Clinton was born, although I'm not sure whether it was in this house... ... or this one round the corner. Crossing railway lines near the station. Hope station. Here comes a train. It would be rolling past for the whole time that it took me to eat a bag of swee... This crowd of people are having their photograph taken at the station. I don't know why they're here... Hope. The eclipse celebrations certainly seem to have started now. The streets in the town centre are clos... What looks like it should be a clock tower instead has pictures of a blacksmith within the outline o... Hope's Fire Station. Strange name for a road. Cows and donkeys. They like to watch me. This road has a lovely smooth shoulder and very little traffic, the scenery is pleasant and the weat... That's the shortest route to my hotel. I checked on Street View a few weeks ago so I know that it's ... The road into Prescott. Today was at least 10 miles shorter than Thursday but a lot more tiring. The... Prescott. Prescott panorama. Somebody in my on-line quiz yesterday said that Arkansas is his favourite state because the people h... The motel. The surrounding premises look quite run-down. I don't know whether any of these businesses are actua... A train of lorry cabs like this is a fairly common sight in America. I should give up predicting where I'm going to go to eat because I usually end up changing my mind. ... It turns out though that most branches actually have a seating area where you can order and eat the ... Vultures. The road is still quiet. The weather is duller than I had expected. There was a small amount of rain... I'm still crossing swampy land. An old gas compression plant. THE LARGE VERSION OF THIS PICTURE IS NOT BLURRED.... These apartment blocks look a bit strange with lawn all around them. Arkadelphia (population 10912). These street names are shown like this. Arkadelphia Town Hall. Arkadelphia. It's much too early for me to go to my hotel yet so I'm going to sit here for an hour. I thought these people were either having a picnic or preparing their spot for watching the eclipse.... The forecast predicts a lot more cloud tomorrow than today, and today is pretty patchy. The total eclipse will be happening this time tomorrow. If it was happening now I wouldn't see it. Part of Henderson State University. The road out of Arkadelphia through the University is leafy but quite hilly. The University's American football field. I couldn't tell what that was with my own eyes. It's a climbing wall. The permanent population might only be 635 but there are probably a similar number of hotel rooms, a... My bike is locked by the pool. I didn't know whether the pool would be open because the blurb about ... My room is laid out almost identically to last night's but the furniture is slightly better and ther... Here are my reservations for tonight and tomorrow night, which are the nights at the start and end o... I got my sub in the end. It's looking pretty sunny out there. The eclipse happens just before 2 o'clock. One weather forecast... There are several of these birds around the hotel. They make a prettier chirping sound than I would ... Guess where I'm intending to watch the eclipse. Today is hot and the air smells of pine trees. The track on the left has another strange name. It's ... Here I had to stop to change the rear inner tube because the old one has lost quite a lot of air in ... Scenery, including some horses. From what I'm standing next to, I can also conclude that a horse has... I've found a double-track section. I used to live near Bedford so on two trips to Pennsylvania I was amused to see that there is a buil... 10000 to 11000 seems to be the standard size for an Arkansas town. Malvern. Malvern. Malvern's Main Street. It seems that Malvern must be nicknamed "Brick City". Makes sense, I suppose. Perhaps I'll start calling my Malvern "Brick City" when I get home... Okay, let's see what's happening up there. It's started. Malvern. Malvern station. I'm qute impressed that you can get a train all the way from here to Los Angeles wi... Part of a long goods train which is in the process of being split in half. As I rode past, this half... Still or sparkling? Church Street... ... as far as I'm aware, it's the only road in Malvern, Arkansas which has the same name as a road i... Malvern. The remains of a house. All through the town I have seen people looking at the sky, but most of them were in their own garde... Eclipse watchers in Malvern Park. The Sun and Moon. Eclipse watchers. Eclipse watchers. Eclipse watchers. Eclipse watchers. Here's what it looks like through a tree. This is where I'm going to watch from. Waiting. Waiting. 10 minutes to go and there's just some feint wispy cloud. I don't know how much that will affect the... 5 minutes. Both times that I've experienced a total eclipse before, the sky has been overcast. On those occasio... More lights coming on. The "diamond ring". And look, there's a solar flare on the bottom edge. That was visible t... This doesn't come across very well in a photograph but it's a very strange thing to see hanging in t... I'm seeing what I wasn't seeing in 2017 when I took ... I think the picture is a bit overexposed. To the naked eye, the ring of bright light was narrower th... The bright dot to the right of the tree is Venus. Mercury should be in the shot too but I can't see ... The sunshine returns. A bird, probably confused by what just happened. Just to show that I did indeed watch the eclipse in Malvern. A last view of Malvern Park. Here's my hotel, where I do have a reservation. Not that it matters: I don't think anywhere is as fu... The view from my room towards Wal-Mart. The desk lamp in this room has two bulbs in it, with separate switches. They are different colours. I said that there a lot of restaurants nearby but actually when I would try later, I would find that... The receptionist said that I could bring the bike into the room to keep it dry. Sunset. Rather like in 2017, the predictions that everywhere in the path of totality would be rammed with pe... The sky just above the trees shows how light it would normally be at this time but thick black cloud... Here's the rain. It's now a day later. The sky was grey all day and there was some rain but not really all that much.... The other guests at breakfast this morning had come from all over the USA to see the eclipse. Severa... For a lift which only goes to three floors, it'sgot a lot of controls. I keep forgetting this town is called Malvern. It amuses me every time. Malvern National Bank. The ground is quite wet now. I've been on major roads for almost the whole trip so far but my intend... The back tyre had gone flat again, because of a tiny hole in the tube which I think might be a manuf... The first part of today's ride is on this: the old military road. The main difference that I found b... I think this stream is probably more full than usual today. Scenery. Today is the first day in many years of these trips that I've got on the road without already having... Today is the last day that I will be riding alongside Interstate 30. In fact, as I write this captio... Benton. Benton. I wonder what the Animal Control is. A shady place to stop for a rest and a drink. I don't know what any of that is about, except that Saline is the name of this County. I just crosse... Benton has more marked bike lanes than anywhere that I've seen since Dallas. This one is too steep f... The warning signs which I saw this morning had gone back to what I think of as the Texas text: "... My plan is to turn right at this junction. I don't think there will be anywhere to eat near where I'... When I was looking at the options for hotels in Little Rock, I saw that a lot of them described how ... The grounds of the University of Arkansas Little Rock. Suburbs of Little Rock. This information board explains how the soil, the road surface and even the trees have been chosen t... Here's the boardwalk but I think I'm too late. It seems to have already handled all the rain which f... Little Rock. Two of the floors of that building have no windows. That calls itself the Songahm Martial Arts Gate. The Arkansas Times building. Little Rock has trams. A view of the garden which is behind the Martial Arts Gate. I don't find that easy to read. This is the second time today that I have glanced at one and both ti... I've come into the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden because a few days ago somebody that I know poste... Sculptures. There are roughly 100 sculptures here. This one is "Elwood" by Herb Mignery. That's what I've come to see: "Interwoven" by Mark Leichliter. Under the Main Street Bridge, which I will be crossing later. This is also by Mark Leichliter. It's called "Meme". His sculptures are more mathematical ... Sculptures. Interwoven. The sculpture park. A lifting bridge. It looks like it was a railway once. I considered using it myself but I've seen qu... In front of the bridge is this: the little rock after which the city is named. Apparently, in 1772 F... I don't know whether "Submarine Tours" means that you can go on a tour of the submarine, o... The Arkansas River. Little Rock. Spare sections of railway track. There's something strange going on with this bike. On Monday morning the back tyre was in good condi... There are some motorcyclists here. My room, looking exactly like it did when I booked it online an hour and a half ago. The road along the base of the embankment is one of the slip roads which ends I-30. The bike shop is... All day I've had a problem with sweat running into my right eye and stinging it. It's gone quite red... Angry Dave's Bicycles, at the top of the hill just where I expected it to be. It's open and was able... I'm having difficulty getting motivated this morning. Thursday's ride to Little Rock was quite drain... Looking back towards Little Rock from part-way up the hill. My hotel is the three-storey building in... The neighbourhoods which I'm riding through on the way out of Little Rock are more affluent than tho... I had difficulty using my bank card three times yesterday so I thought I had better get some more ca... I saw eight Hercules in the sky during the time it took me to ride past Little Rock Air Force Base. ... A herc. This is the biggest Sonic I've seen yet. It's got space for about 40 cars plus all this seating for ... The maps were right. This is flat. I do have a tailwind too so it's easy riding. This useful path guides me through the town of Searcy. The same path. It even has benches in this shady part. Next to my hotel there's a hospital with a helicopter on the roof. Later in the evening I would hear... That's strange. The bottle holder on the bike's left side (your right) has been completely crushed d... ... unless there were a lot more cars here during the night than I realised, why was somebody even p... Today is Sunday morning so there are a lot of cars parked at the church. I'm really just taking this... Two of the tropes of my photos in one shot. Bradford. A slightly different view of Bradford. This tractor is sort of ploughing the field next to the road but it's doing it in a very strange way... ... it's just churning up wiggly trenches of soil like this. A lot of empty pallets on the train going past. Now the land on one side of the road is this swampy bayou which looks like something out of the Deep... ... and on the other side it's this Midwestern arable land. The old and new bridges across the White River into Newport. The White River. Newport. On the left is what looks like a railway station but passenger trains don't stop there. I a... The New Revival Centre in Newport. Because of the tailwind, the 40 mile journey to get here only took 3 hours, which means that I'm sti... The air around the main road looks rather dusty. I'm glad I didn't come that way. I chose last night's hotel because it was close to a lot of restaurants but then when I got there I ... I could have stayed in a cheaper hotel in the town centre but I've got a video meeting scheduled for... The bathroom is bigger than I was expecting and has more handrails. I'm now wondering whether I book... The view from my window. I didn't go over and check my bike closely but from here it doesn't look like anything else strange ... Some documentation which I will need later in the trip has just become available and fortuitously th... This is at the place which I thought was a power station, just along the road from the hotel. It isn... A scrapyard where something is working hard, producing a lot of smoke. The first 50 km of today's route are almost perfectly straight, on a road like this. Here's a rare sight: a train heading South. Scenery. The view ahead from where I've stopped to drink a bottle of water. Through the haze I can see the br... A rural level crossing. When a bright red bird flew past me on my first day in Dallas, I thought I would be seeing them ever... A state law passed in 2009 designated the road which I have been on today as the "Rock 'n' Roll... Walnut Ridge. When I initially worte this caption I said that this was the last passenger station that I would see... A shady place where I stopped for a rest in Walnut Ridge. Apparently the Beatles did stop off in Walnut Ridge during their first North american tour in 1964. This is the fourth consecutive riding day when I've stopped for a Sonic, which is starting to feel a... No, you'll have to give me a clue. Walnut Ridge is where I peel away from the railway line which I have been following closely most of ... The old railway line. The old railway line. Here the rails are still visible. That looks like a VORTAC, for aircraft navigation. It's just outside Walnut Ridge Regional Airport. This is US Highway 67, which I have been on for the last 13 km. It's busier than most of the roads t... It looks like somebody has already crashed into this post once so I'm locking my bike to the back of... The hotel lobby is quite swanky. I caused a bit of confusion when I tried to check in here because a... As I recall, on my 2017 trip every hotel had a working ice machine on every floor. I deduced that th... The view from my window isn't very impressive. Pocahontas in the evening. Pocahontas in the evening. The Sonic company obviously don't supply their restaurants with branded mailboxes.... This vehicle was parked outside the hotel this morning. I don't know what it is but that looks like ... A few days ago I showed you ... Back streets of Pocahontas, Arkansas. On a bank. Pocahontas. I'm flirting with the very edge of the Ozark Mountains. Today's ride, like most days, will be almost... For the next 9 miles, I have a choice of either the modern road, which is both US 62 and US 67, or t... A small hamlet on the old road. This is the road which the Beatles would have used. A traffic jam caused by three tractors. Flat scenery. One of several oversize loads on the road. It's far too early to try to check into a hotel here in Corning. The next ones are in Poplar Bluff. ...