To Hot Springs National Park and back

I promised myself that I would reserve Friday for a good long motorcycle ride.

I initially though of Eureka Springs and Sean Franklin's Cycle Gadgets as a destination. After all, it's just 230 miles or so. But Google Maps estimated the travel time at 4 hours and 40 minutes, which would probably stretch out to nearly 10 hours in the saddle for a round trip and not much time in the middle to hang out and sight-see.

To make matters worse, I had a CD to get into the mail - it had to go out Friday or wait until Monday. So 10 a.m. found me standing outside the local post office trying to decide where to go. I had my National Parks Passport, an impulse buy last July at Devil's Tower, in my tank bag so I got it out to see where in Arkansas I might comfortably ride in a day to collect a stamp.

I settled on Hot Springs National Park at Hot Springs, Ark. It was a 384-mile round trip, but riding time is much shorter because almost all of it was across the flat delta landscape that extends from northeast Arkansas to the southwest quadrant of the state - a mere 3 hours and 30 miles, according to Google Maps.

So I set my Garmin GPS for Hot Springs National Park and headed out. A strong crosswind was blowing from the south and the gusts made for some uncomfortable riding, especially on east-west sections like the stretch of Ark. 14 from U.S. 49 to U.S. 63.

I stopped about 1-ish at a Wendy's just west of Little Rock for lunch and a blog entry, then pressed on to Hot Springs. I guess I expected a traditional semi-wilderness national park scene. What I found was a town build around hot mineral springs with a parade of commercial bath houses lining the main drag, including one that was now the park's visitor center.

I stuck a couple of nickels into a parking meter and tramped down the street about a block to the visitor center where I stamped my passport in the bookstore.

I used to think the national park passport thing was stupid, but with only two stamps so far, I'm thinking about accumulating more as I explore this region.

I stuffed the passport back into my tank bag, set my GPS destination for the BMW motorcycle dealership in Little Rock and hit the road.

BMW Motorcycles of Little Rock is the only BMW dealership in the area I haven't visited. The nearest is a disappointing mostly Yamaha shop - and only incidentally BMW - in Memphis that I scoped out last summer.

The other is Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles in Cape Girardeau, which is about the same distance from my house as the Little Rock dealer. Grass Roots has a good relationship with the BMW Riders of the Mid-South and often gives club members discounts, so that's where I went last summer to have a new battery installed in my K1200GT before riding off to Wyoming and Colorado.

I hit Little Rock at the beginning of the evening rush hour and slogged my way through traffic to the dealership.

It's a nice shop that also sells Triumph and Ducati bikes. The folks are friendly and I bought a t-shirt to commemorate my visit there.

The winds had mostly abated by now, but what remained gave me a nice tailwind as I rode northeast on U.S. 67 and only lightly buffeted me as I rode east on Ark. 14.

I arrived at home about 7 p.m. to find that Maria had thoughtfully left the garage door open for me and parked the Subaru off to the side to give me a clean shot at my bike parking space.