Memphis to Ft Smith, Arkansas

Sunday morning I dropped Ree at the airport for her flight back to Tallahassee.  I drove back through Memphis, across the Mississippi and into Arkansas.

More Mississippi delta lands, in cotton, some hay, then something green, I believe rice.

I40 is a big trucker road from Chicago to LA,

 I dropped down to Hwy 70 and drove through fields and small towns, Palestine, Brinkley, Carlisle, Lonoke, others.

a lot filled with what looked like tractor wheels

Most of these small towns, like so many across the country, have old downtown buildings that are mostly empty, deserted.  Healthy downtowns were the core of these towns from the early 1900's until the 1970's, and the much lamented loss of small town society can be traced directly to townspeople deserting downtown businesses.  People still live there, houses often look well kept, and the churches are doing well, but the toens are far different than they once were.

More small towns

 someone put real money into this town back in the day

 some very large elevators, I think for rice

 and farms with extensive bins.  clearly some folks are doing just fine.

Not far from Little Rock, I passed several miles of swamps along the high, filled with cypress, turning with the season before losing their needles.

In to North Little Rock, interesting things going on

then across the Arkansas River and into downtown Little Rock.

I got out the bicycle and rode aalong the waterfront, nice paths lead up and down the river and past the Clinton Library

A repurposed railroad bridge carries bicyclists and pedestrians across the river, fun and aa fine view from the top deck.

There is some good public art, including a bust of Casimir Pulaski, Polish nobleman, hero of our Revolutionary war

a downtown trolley

a variety of condo and apartment buildings, old and new

and some hipness as well.  The waterfront is very nice and downtown has a good if dated feel.  It has a ways to go but the pieces are there.

I drove to the south end of downtown to the state capitol, a huge stone pile with brass doors, a dome copied from Alabama and photos and busts of past governors gracing the walls.

Leaving the capitol, I drove througha pooer, black section of town, the out Hwy 10 through miles and miles of  new suburban housing and the accompanying malls and stores.  It seems this is where the middle class now live.  Once out of the suburbs, I was in rolling, hilly, wooded country, very pretty, with lakes and small farms.  These are the first real hills I had seen since  I think New England, the Ouachita Mountains, a 300 million year old range that was once as high as the Rockies, and once a part of the Appalachian Mountains.

Along one stretch pf the highway were many chicken farms, and one of the small towns had a strong Mexican presence, including four Mexican restaurants in a town of fewer than a thousand people.  We can thanks them for doing the absolute nastiest jobs in the land - raising and processing chickens- so we can enjoy cheap chicken nuggets.

 More pretty countryside

a small sawmill, one of the first I'd seen in a long time

Mt Magazine, at 2,753 feet the highest in the range

Finally out of the mountains at dusk to Ft Smith, second largest city in Arkansas, an old town kick started by the discovery of natural gas in the 1880s.  With its wide streets, it felt like a western town, maybe the beginning of the west.