Craig and I met my cousin Mary and her boyfriend Bo on the North Little Rock side of the Arkansas River Trail on Tuesday to go for a ride. Mary had offered to borrow bikes for both of us, but when I saw that we could rent a cruiser tandem on the trail Craig and I decided it was a perfect excuse to “lose our tandem virginity” on the “divorce bike.”

Mary and Bo recommended we take the North Little Rock side of the trail, since it was almost all through parks and thus safer and more scenic. It’s really impressive what they’ve done on the seven mile trail out to the Big Dam Bridge in North Little Rock. The bike itself was a pretty goofy ride, which made up for the discomfort of it being all around a bit too small with awkward geometry.

We rode with Mary and Bo to the top of the bridge.

Since Mary had to be at work that afternoon they left us and went back they way they came. In fact, both Dave at River Trail Rentals and Mary encouraged us to just ride the North Little Rock side of the trail and out to Rebsamen Golf Course and back rather than trying to navigate the on-road portions of the trail on the Little Rock side.

In the end we chose to ride out to the end of the trail on the west end of the Little Rock side by the I-430 bridge, which will be extended to take people to Two Rivers Park and out to Pinnacle. Construction was under way. Once out there Craig and I decided to take the Little Rock side back, if for no other reason than to see the entire loop.

They were all correct that the portion after the golf course, until you get back to river front park is not that great. Little Rock could definitely stand to improve the trail, and after being in North Little Rock the difference is stark by comparison, though in truth if they just did a better job of marking the pavement the experience could be greatly improved.

Still the junction bridge, an old train bridge converted to a pedestrian bridge on the east end of the loop is pretty great. If and when they transform the train bridge nearer to the Clinton library things will be even more exciting.

After we returned the bikes we headed over to Hillcrest to check out the antique French chicken coop that Chris had at Clement that has been taunting me since he posted the link on Facebook.

They also had a collection of truly beautiful glass beads in some awesome colors.

I know better than to buy them and expect they’d do anything other than take up space in my house, which I don’t need right now. After Clement we stopped by Leo’s and got milkshakes. Craig had been committed to a vanilla shake, but unfortunately they were out of vanilla ice cream and he was stuck with a chocolate shake.

That evening we picked up Goke and went to dinner at the Buffalo Grill on Rebsamen. At last I had my cheese dip.

After dinner we went back to Goke’s so I could look through her old photos in hopes of finding the one of Granny with her three kids, wearing the dress she’d given me. After finding all sorts of great old photos, and almost all of them well labeled, at the very bottom of the second drawer of the bureau I found the photo I’d been looking for.

This post is tagged