Wednesday, October 28th, 2026

We made it to a small town in Arkansas yesterday afternoon called Batesville. Cute town, where most of the main street is still populated with businesses. This is just a one-night stopover on our way to Clarksdale, Mississippi. Arkansas has had some beautiful riding, and we have been lucky so far to get nice weather.

One thing that has stood out in taking a route like this through smaller towns on back roads is just how the places are crumbling. Most of the towns have some sections that are boarded up and clearly abandoned. There were several small towns that all but looked completely abandoned. The infrastructure, if it is still standing, is rusting, and it is just a matter of time before it completely crumbles. It is sad to see. And if you didn’t know that the USA was the economic powerhouse that it is, you would think we were a dead economy by looking at these places. I know there are many decades of policies that caused the decay of rural America. And of course, we now better understand the political fallout and shift to populism that many of those policies created. But seeing the locations with your own eyes, knowing that at one point these towns were thriving, makes me sad.

Even though much of this part of the country is crumbling, the people have been great. Everyone is super friendly and welcoming. Riding through small-town rural America is really the only way to get a sense of what is really going on in this country. We are only ten days into our two-month trip, so I am sure we will get to see more of what makes the country what it is as we move into Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia.