Day 5

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Walmart Supercenter Alert

We decided to start a little game on the ride and keep count of how many Walmart Supercenters we come across on these back roads. So far we are up to 8.

The cheapest gas we have seen so far has been $1.95 a gallon.

Today was a very long day. We ended up riding about 540 miles total. The weather was fantastic and the ride was beautiful. We left Russellville, Arkansas at about 9:15 AM and started north up Highway 7 through the Ozarks. What a fantastic ride. The scenery was amazing.

Chris had a little scare on the ride up highway 7. I was riding behind him and I noticed a deer on the side of the road up ahead of Chris. Then the deer started to move and I said. “No way is that deer going to run out into the road in front of Chris.” Sure enough the stupid deer darts across the road in front of Chris. Luckily it didn’t require any major evasive maneuvers on our part and the deer cleared the road. Chris said it was close enough that he could here the deer’s hooves on the road…close call.

We continued up highway 7 North to 412. We took 412 east across Arkansas into Missouri and then into Tennessee. 412 was a nice road that reminded us a little bit of riding through the Hill Country in Texas. The trip has made it very obvious to me that California has the worst roads in the US. Even on the drive in the truck the roads through New Mexico and the state roads in Texas were 200% better than the roads in California. The small backroads in Arkansas were fantastic. It is a shame that Californian’s are so heavily taxed and we have the worst road infrastructure. They also do a much better job of labeling all the roads and upcoming intersections. Arkansas does a great job in labeling all of the roads, it was very easy to navigate all of the backroads in Arkansas.

The day was very long but we finally made it to Nashville around 8:30 Saturday night.