On The Road To Heber Springs

This is a ride that I've wanted to do and have planned to do pretty much since I started riding. Back in my boardsailing days at Greers Ferry Lake, my friend, Robert Orr, would ride up from Little Rock and I was in awe. We have a house on the Little Red and since I started riding I've had the notion of riding up there. The ride isn't particularly long or hard, but I was intimidated by the prospect of the traffic and it seemed the timing was never quite right, as we usually go up on Friday or Saturday afternoon, when traffic is at it's worst, both in terms of volume and driver attitude. Last week, Diane had planned a Sunday outing to the river house with her folks and her sisters, Mary and Sharon, who were visiting from California along with Mary's boys, Nicholas and Alex. Perfect. I had my setup! For route information, I called a friend who had made the ride a couple of times on the wheel of her hammerhead brother. Due to the trauma of riding at the limit through the hills, she could only give me some vague information, but it was enough.

I plotted a route on Google Maps that would take me north on Hwy 107 to Vilonia. From Vilonia, things looked a little sketchy, as I needed to get from Vilonia to Naylor in order to get on Hwy 36. I found a couple of routes and settled on Simpson Road after using the "street level photo" feature on Google Earth to determine that it is actually paved. It had a few miles of gravelly chip-and-seal, but wasn't bad at all. Other than this stretch, the ride was on state highways and , to my pleasant surprise, I had them pretty much to myself. From Naylor, I headed through Mount Vernon to suburban Rose Bud, then took Hwy 124 to where it rejoins Hwy 107. From there, I had a little more traffic on 107, 16 and 25 into Heber, but the shoulders were wide and clean, so no problem.

Most of the route is rolling hills and very good rural scenery consisting of a mix of small towns, farmland, pasture and woods. For whatever reason, there are few of the eyesores you see on many Arkansas roads. I left North Little Rock on Sunday morning a little after 7:00AM and got to the river house a little before noon, making a few water stops and having maintained a moderate pace. I was being protective of my legs as I wasn't sure what kind of hills I'd run into and having seriously miscalculated the difficulty of rides before! Besides, it was a sweet morning and I was just enjoying the road! As it turned out, the hills were mostly long and gradual, the roads were in good shape, the weather was good, the dogs were old and slow, the headwind was slight and traffic was virtually nonexistent. It seems like the whole ride is slightly uphill (which it is, if you look at the elevation mapping in the post below) until the reward of the big downhill on Hwy 25 into Heber Springs, where you give all of the climbing back in the distance of a few miles as you scream down the smooth blacktop to town. In short, a very good ride!

I rode with my Garmin, which indicated 5200 feet of ascending; however, when I plotted the route on Map My Ride, it indicates only about 2000 feet. The Garmin is not at its most reliable when it comes to altitude, but I can't believe it was THAT far wrong. I need to find another resource to serve as the tiebreaker! Basic stats of my ride: 74.51 miles at 16.4 MPH.

It's always rewarding to plot out a new ride and have it exceed your expectations, which this ride certainly did.

The ride is mapped below and plans are already afoot to do it again!

I rolled into the driveway at the river just in time for lunch, then shuttled the family upstream for a little float trip, followed by a few hours of serious mowing. Since I'd had all of the fun riding up, I allowed Diane the pleasure of driving me back to NLR as I napped.