The Under Appreciated Loop And The Oldfield Opry. MO14-MO76-MO125

A view over the Ozark Mountains from Good Hope.

There are lots of routes to ride in the Ozarks, almost all of which are good rides, but it's also easy to get in the habit of riding the same roads all the time. I find that the local riders generally fall into this rut.  They know a few routes and every time they get a chance they go ride one of them.  In time we'll go over those more popular routes here. For today though, we're going to go over one of the best and least appreciated routes in the Ozarks.

The Mother Road (Route 66 Strafford to Lebanon)

The Mother Road, as it was called by John Steinbeck, in his novel, "The Grapes of Wrath".

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 — the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield — over the red lands and the grey lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

Reasons To Ride The Ozarks

Living in the Ozarks, I often overlook the reasons that people come here to ride. Sure there are more miles of twisty, decently maintained, mountain road than anywhere else in the Midwest and for many that, is reason enough.  Yesterday, I was out for a little jaunt around the area and it hit me as I was headed down highway 13 on the way to Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  I topped a hill and the view in the morning mist blew me away.  From the top of that hill I could see for miles, the valley below and the rolling hills ahead as they grew to an impressive summit far in the distance.

A Weekend With Murphy...

This past weekend I had grand plans to have a ride report and video up for you of M highway south from Nixa, Mo. The ride it's self was excellent. M highway is a great road, a little straight for my taste but it connects to several fun roads. The path I traveled was M to U to A and back to Clever, Mo. A nice little ride that takes you from smooth two lane to your average country one and a half lane blacktop and back to smooth two lane.
The route take you along the path of the James river, it's visible in some places, and by a couple of golf courses. The rest is your average country road affair with varying sizes of homes, barns of all types, cattle, Horses and the occasional lama or alpaca. Awesome. The only problem was, I took a two hour video of the clouds, you see I forgot to snug up all the joints on the camera mount.

On Saturday, the wife and I set out for a ride to an event and made it as far as the gas station, where I discovered oil all over my front left brake caliper. My wife had to make it to the event so, I took her home to high tail it in the car, while I rode to the dealer 60 miles away.  Those were 60 stressful miles, I'm allergic to brake fluid and oils with detergents, and there I was cruising down I-44 with a rag in my left hand wiping the oil off the tank and trying to get as little of it on me as possible, worrying that I would not have front brakes if I needed them.  When I got to the dealer, Ozarks Harley Davidson, they put the bike in the wash bay right away and the service manager came back and told me that it was fork oil, blown front fork seals. That was great, easier fix and no detergents in the oil that was all over me. Three hours later, I was back on the bike and headed home a few dollars poorer. The ride home was much better.

That was just the bike mishaps, Ty our boxer has an allergic reaction to what the Vet claims was a bug bite on Friday night. What ever it was, it made the poor puppy grow lumps all over! My wife spent all of Friday night with taking care of him. Thankfully by Saturday morning all the lumps were gone. The rest of the weekend was spent taking care of the aftermath though, Ty was sick all weekend and my beautiful wife was tired all weekend from tending to him.

All in all it wasn't a bad weekend, but I didn't get anything I planned on getting done, done.

The Curvy Road

Road: The Curvy Road; a collection of road names but essentially one road.

From: Missouri JJ

To: Missouri 14

Road Level: 4 See our road rating guide.

less than 2 lanes, lots of tar snakes

Hazards:

Farm animals

Residential road

The following is a video I shot while riding this road on my Harley-Davidson FXDF Fat Bob.   Be sure to choose one of the HD options when viewing the video.

What The.... are We Doing Here?

Ozarks Ride Report is simply where we are going to start cataloging rides and roads in the Ozarks. After hearing all the jealousy surrounding the fact that I live in the middle of those awesome roads, I found that most riders visiting the area, and some that live here, rarely get out there and see or ride the Ozarks for all it's worth. There seems to be a couple routes, that we will cover, that almost everyone rides over and over again.  This is not necessary, the Southwest Missouri/ Northwest Arkansas area are full of great roads. The mission here is to bring those other routes to light and make them easy for locals and visitors to discover and ride.

Over the next few weeks we'll be working up a standard form for writing up a road/route, getting the video equipment working, learning out how to edit the video and figuring out how to make google maps work for us and you, so that when a person looks through our posts and decides on a road or route it should be easy to get a map.

The current plan is to start with SW Missouri and work our way into Arkansas, but that could change with the wind or a wrong turn. Sometimes getting lost is the best way to discover, and I get lost often.

One last note, this will also be our motorcycling blog. We'll be looking at issues that affect motorcyclists from weather to gear and anything else that happens by. 

Keep the shiney side up and your knees in the breeze!

Zelrick