Out for a Monday morning drive

Maria doesn't have to be at work until 1 p.m. today, so we took the top off of the del Sol and went for a drive.
After stopping at the Brookland Post Office to dispatch a couple of Ebay sales, we went exploring on Crowley's Ridge, cruising up and down county roads we'd not driven before.
The weather is damn near perfect again today - cloudless sky and upper 70s.
Maria cut some roadside honeysuckle with an eye to cultivating it along our backyard chain link fence.
We checked out Frierson Lake State Park, which was mostly deserted. Since we'd left our serious cameras at home, we used my cell phone camera to record the moment.
Here's an intentional "tourist" shot of me and the lake. Notice that the horizon isn't level and that I'm way too far away from the camera, not to mention looking unnaturally stiff and posed.

The second shot was Maria getting it right. The third is Maria in black-and-white taking in the scenery. My Treo smartphone camera often produces photos that require a lot of Photoshop color correction. The one of Maria was so skewed toward the magenta, with other weird imbalances, that I just gave up and made it grayscale.

Riding to Chili's

Maria had to work at the paper for awhile yesterday, so I fired up the John Deere and mowed the lawn.
With some daylight left, we decided to take the K1200GT out for a ride. We followed the Crowley's Ridge Parkway up to Paragould for a light dinner at Chili's.
No beer, thanks - we're riding.
Unsweet iced tea.
Around here you have to specify or they might bring you iced tea that's heavily laced with sugar.

Probing the Parkway

I explored farther north on the Crowley's Ridge Parkway scenic route yesterday afternoon on a pleasant 125-mile motorcycle ride.
I took the route as far north and east as Piggott before picking up U.S. 49 for a quick run home.
It was a sunny day with temperatures in the low 70s and the crop dusters were out by the squadrons spraying the cotton fields. I managed to avoid getting sprayed, but did catch a whiff of agrochemical as I rode past one freshly dusted field.
The parkway is really just a series of Arkansas and U.S. highways and lacks the consistency and elegance of the Blue Ridge Parkway or the Natchez Trace. That said, it is a great twisty road with lots of elevation changes with the occasional digression out into the flatlands to the west of Crowley's Ridge.
There's rain in the forecast for the next few days, but I hope to explore the southern section of the route later this spring.