Monday, October 26th, 2026

We are one week into our trip and our first completely down day. No motorcycling planned today. Even days we were staying more than one night in a town we ended up finding cool roads in the area to go for a ride. It will be nice to have a rest day. And Eureka Springs seems like a good place to have a rest day. It is full on a tourist town. And we got a full taste of that yesterday when we got in. Being a Sunday, the sidewalks were packed with people checking out shops and restaurants. Even with all the people, the vibe of the town was pretty cool. I’m interested to see if things calm down today and we can see a different side of the town.

Riding every day takes it out of us a bit. On these little bikes, it is work to ride. But, still super enjoyable. There were times I wished I still had my super bike while riding these twisty roads in Arkansas. But our little CRF 300L’s will have to do. These bikes are great for our travels. Having a bike that can take off-road sections of something like the Ozark BDR-X one moment then handle the street, all while loaded down with all our gear works well for our longer travels.

Traveling this way requires a bit of flexibility that is somewhat new to me. Val commented the other night that I have been much better at not needing to know what we are doing on any given day. Learning to go with the flow and just take things as they come isn’t very natural to me. But, there is also no reasonable way to try to plan two months of travel on a day-by-day basis. And as we get further into this trip, we are learning more about the towns we are approaching and how many miles we are willing to put on the bikes each day. We have already switched up the schedule a bit from the original sketch of a plan. And I am happy we did. Getting a day riding the Ozark BDR-X was well worth it. We barely touched the surface of that ride. But it gave us a taste of what the area and the BRD trails are like.

The most challenging part of this trip so far has been worrying about our friends and neighbors back at home, while still trying to stay present with what we are doing here. Everyone is safe, which is the good part, but many people still don’t know how bad the damage is at their homes. It is going to be a huge clean-up effort for many months. And as we move into winter there is a limited window to get the work done. I’m afraid some houses are just going to take years to get back to normal.