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Published: October 18th 2014
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Amazingly, we awoke Tuesday morning and it wasn't raining. Today we leave dear old Trout Haven, Jim and Don heading northwest to Fayetteville and Ray and I heading northeast to Carbondale, IL. Our ride will be another roughly 330 mile day. After checking the weather forecast, it looked like we may have dry riding today. I went outside to take some pictures of Don's bike. It's a Harley Sportster, but you'd never know it. He bought it as a wreck for $600 and rebuilt everything on it. He added saddle bags and a trunk. He also added a whole lot of other things, using copper for all the accents. He did all this work himself. Really interesting.
After saying our goodbyes, we rode off in our separate directions. Ray and I stopped at an old gas station for a photo op. I would have made many more stops at scenic things if only the weather had cooperated. We rode through northwest Arkansas, which was not as scenic as where we had been. A lot of northwest Arkansas is flat with lots of rice fields. Kinda like Illinois without the corn. We crossed from Arkansas into Missouri and stopped for lunch
at a bar and grill in Dexter, Missouri called Robbie D's. By then, we had already made a gas stop and put on our rain gear because, what else?, it started drizzling again. Robbie D's turned into an excellent stop. The food was outstanding and so was the company we were in. There were several guys there and they were all Cardinal fans, waiting for the game with the Giants to start. They went outside to check out the Spyders and had a million questions about them. Very friendly people again and we hated to leave. If we didn't have so far to go, I would have stayed to watch the Cardinal game.
After leaving Missouri, we crossed into Illinois at Cairo. Man, it was a ghost town. It didn't look like anything was open.
North of Cairo, we decide to ride some great scenic roads through the Shawnee National Forest, even though it was still raining steadily. We rode through Anna/Jonesboro, Cobden and Makanda. We rode into Carbondale on Old Rte. 51. But the fact of the matter is that it wasn't much fun because of all the rain. We went up Illinois Street in Carbondale where
Under The Fender Kilt
He asked if his copper chain was a skirt or a kilt. He said it was a kilt because there were balls under it. it seemed like there were about 20 bars back in the 70's, but I only noticed one or two, Hangar 9 and PK's. We went straight to our motel, the Super 8 and unpacked. After about an hour, the rain stopped and we went outside to hop on the bikes to go have a beer somewhere from the old days. The seats were wet and we just didn't want to put on the rain gear again, so we walked a couple doors down to the Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon. The manager was from the Chicago area and we had a great conversation with him about Carbondale and SIU. At least we could just walk home, too.
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