I’m not sure how a regular work week feels 10 times as long as a vacation week, but it seems like I’ve just blinked and boom the week is gone. Most of you will probably not find our trip particularly entertaining (like one of those awful vacation slide shows someone makes you watch, ugh) so I’ll keep it quick and dirty.

We road tripped with the dogs and the mountain bikes to Northern Arkansas. I have family up there and spent many summers/holidays there as a kid, but SO had never been. No one ever believes me when I say how beautiful it is, but trust me… it’s a “must visit” at some point in your life if you’re at all into the outdoors.

We had planned to mountain bike and hike on Tuesday but we woke up to rain and decided to flip-flop our plans instead. So we went into town (Mountain View) and dinked around all the cool shops there, and found lots of food. We spent the afternoon wandering around the backroads with the dogs (who thought Arkansas was AWESOME, so many squirrels). On our walk we came upon these two little Appys in a field, who came running when they saw us, so I got a little pony time.

Wednesday we woke up to perfect mountain biking weather – 45 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The trails were beautiful.

I wish I could say that we had an awesome long ride and everything went as planned, but… well… what was supposed to be a 12 mile loop turned into a 3.9 mile ride and 4.1 mile walk for me. I gashed the hell out of my rear tire to the point where our attempts to fix it were unsuccessful, and there was no “bail out” point on the loop for quite a ways. You know what’s not fun? Walking really far in bike shoes, dragging your bike along with you, especially on trails with a lot of overgrowth and thorns. Ah well, it wouldn’t be a bike adventure if I wasn’t bleeding. Any recommendations for getting a crapton of burrs out of lycra???

 

Not to worry, we eased our sorrows with the best malts on the planet

Then spent the afternoon adventuring with the dogs again before capping it off with a catfish dinner and a whole lot of back porch sittin and reading. Of course, when I got up the next morning I felt like I’d gotten run over by a Mack truck, but whatever.

Another fun note – on the drive home we were passing through one little town after another and as we drove into Quitman, AR I said “Hey this is the town Henry came from”. Then I noticed a little farm on the left with some jumps in the ring and said “Hey look they have jumps!” then a second later we passed the sign out front and wouldn’t you know – that’s the farm Henry came from! Small world. I bought him sight unseen so I’ve never been there. I casually said we should stop by but I think SO sensed DANGER ZONE, TOO MUCH MONEY ALREADY SPENT HERE and I’m pretty sure I felt him speed up as he pretended not to hear me.

All in all, a fun vacation and I’ve got yet another Arkansas convert on my hands. We’ll be back again some day (with better bike equipment). Until then, it’s back to the real world. We’ve got a Halloween party at our house tonight that I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for yet, then tomorrow I’m jump judging at an event a couple hours away, so somehow I’ve managed to book myself solid for the rest of my vacation.

Hope everyone had a good week, I’ve got to catch up on everything I missed while I was gone!