"Pearl" in Winter Garden, Florida
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Long shadows in Wyoming
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 Forty-ninth for us, that is. Over the years, we'd managed to make it to every other US state except Alaska (understandable; it's awfully far from the eastern/midwestern US) and Arkansas, of all things. Kinda strange, huh? We thought so too. So on this cross-country trip, we were determined to get to Arkansas. Alaska would have to wait for another time. We stayed in downtown Little Rock, which was much busier and more bustling than we imagined. We wanted to ride the Arkansas River Trail and also see the Clinton Library, so we had a good location for that. On our first evening in town, we checked out the city lights from our hotel parking deck. The Bank of America building was all decked out for Breast Cancer Awareness month. 
Little Rock at dusk
The next morning dawned bright and sunny, though a bit chilly; still, a fine October day for our bike ride. We had to negotiate the downtown streets, many of which are one-way, but made it over to the river path. 
We rode over to the Clinton Presidential Library and bridge. Pretty impressive! 
Barry crossing the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge
The Clinton Library is very modern in design and quite wide. I had to take two photos to get it all in! 
I would have enjoyed taking a tour, but by the time we were through with our bike ride, we'd missed the last tour of the day. Maybe another time.... Here I am on the river trail. It's a really lovely paved trail if you're ever in the area. 
There are several bridges over the Arkansas River, including the "big dam bridge", which we rode over. It was very windy up on the bridge! 
big dam bridge
Emily riding over the big dam bridge
Barge on Arkansas River
After riding west on the trail to the end, we continued riding on a nice bike lane. Here's where we turned around to begin riding back to downtown Little Rock. 
Once back on the trail, we rode back to downtown on the south side of the river.
We enjoyed our brief visit in Arkansas, but we were glad to escape our busy downtown hotel and head to rural Mississippi the next day. Stay tuned!
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 We came to Oklahoma City on our way from the northwest to the southeast in hopes of riding a couple of bike trails (the Oklahoma River Trail and South Grand Trail); however, it was not to be. We'd been having mostly very good weather during our trip, so we knew our luck would run out eventually. On our only full day in the city, we had windy, rainy weather that just wasn't going to work for bicycling. So, instead of riding, we caught up on some indoor tasks (like blogging, working on photographs, and so forth). The next morning, the sun was shining brightly (although it was still windy), so we took the opportunity to swing through downtown on our way out of town. Barry is an avid baseball fan so wanted to see the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark and all the baseball statues and history depicted there in honor of some of the sport's preeminent players. And a weekday morning after rush hour was a great time to see downtown as it was very quiet. 
Oklahoma City skyline
Barry with Mickey Mantle statue
Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark
Barry with Johnny Bench statue
Our next stop is Little Rock, Arkansas, where we had better cycling weather. Stay tuned!
As promised in Part 1 of this series, we had our best balloon viewing weather on this day, which made the balloons really pop. We had great views from the bike trail; this was definitely the highlight of our stay in Albuquerque. We got to see more of them up really close, and it was an amazing experience. So come along and check it out!      One of the "special shapes" balloons of the fiesta         More special shapes -- many of these don't fly unless weather conditions are exactly right         Maneki-Neko, a good luck cat from Japan!  Barry's just as colorful as the balloons!      We hope you enjoyed your virtual trip to Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta! But nothing beats being there in person. I highly recommend you consider adding this show to your "bucket list". It's so worth the trip!
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. 
Paisley, May 2016
States visited (pre-RV)
Pearl, a 2007 Newmar Bay Star
States visited in "Pearl"
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