Day 03 - Arkansas to Oklahoma

We started the day a bit earlier than planned and were rolling down the road by 7:30am. The temps were in the mid 70s and the air quite humid.

We made a short 70 mile run west on I-40 and then exited onto Scenic Byway Route 7 through the Ozarks. A few miles along Rt. 7, we stopped at the Rotary Ann scenic overlook.

The view reminded me of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We traveled north along Rt. 7 and then west along Rt. 16 where we picked up Rt. 23 (the Pig Trail Scenic Byway). The Pig Trail was quite a fun piece of road. Here's a sample.

We stopped for lunch just south of Fort Smith. It was 12:40pm and we had only about 100 miles left before reaching McAlester, OK. The last 100 miles went quickly and we rolled into McAlester at 2:40pm! We had ridden the 340 scheduled miles in just over 7 hours. When checking into the hotel in McAlester, Tom kept mumbling about "something not being right".  He just couldn't believe that I had actually scheduled a riding day that had us done before 5pm. I'm sure I'll make up for it later on in the trip. ;-)

Tomorrow we are scheduled to cover 550 miles traveling south out of Oklahoma and then crossing northern Texas on our way to New Mexico. We'll keep our fingers crossed that our luck of dry weather continues tomorrow. The forecast is calling for a 40% chance of thunderstorms.