6:15 AM. Radio check first, because nothing ruins a drive faster than three guys yelling into dead air at a stop sign. Routes synced next. Then coffee and something with icing from a food truck that had no business being that good at that hour.

The route was called “Riding Mo Breweries and Wine – Aged in Oak, Ridden Hard.” We didn’t stop at a single brewery. Didn’t touch a winery either. We just rode it hard and let the name cash the check we had no intention of paying.

The GPX doesn’t editorialize, so here’s what it actually logged: 244.7 miles, starting around 715 feet of elevation and topping out at 2,303, with something close to 12,000 feet of total climbing by the time we were done. Nobody signed up for a hill climb. The Ozarks just don’t believe in flat.

That’s the terrain, for anyone who hasn’t driven it. Hardwood forest pressing in on both sides, roads that fold back on themselves through hollows, elevation that changes before you’ve finished processing the last corner. Sightlines are short. Patience is required. Reward is constant.

We hadn’t planned on Big Cedar Lodge, but proximity won the argument. Detoured in, wandered the grounds — it’s enormous, the kind of place that makes you start mentally scheduling a trip with kids and grandkids you don’t currently have plans for. Late breakfast at the Truman Café sealed the detour as the right call. Good view of the grounds, better view of a plate finally showing up.

From Big Cedar we were off-script anyway, so we handed the next leg to the Porsche ROADS app: Big Cedar to Jasper, Jasper back to Eureka Springs. It delivered. John made a case partway through for bailing onto Highway 7 instead. We didn’t take it, and the app kept finding the kind of road that makes you forget you had anywhere else to be.
One thing Arkansas does better than most: highways. Wide, well-banked, maintained like someone’s job depends on it — because someone’s job does. The towns still have some infrastructure homework to finish, but nobody drives 200-plus miles for the town square.

John eventually peeled off toward Fayetteville to deal with something he’d left behind, and the drive closed out from there.