A bad ass biker and a ghost town - Roadtrip memories

I have spent the first two days of my roadtrip with my children and grandchildren. I am leaving here in the morning. For today I am posting a memory from one of my roadtrips past. It happened in Arkansas and so long ago that I might be the only one who remembers. I was riding cross country with my lover on his Harley and we got stuck behind a wreck or something that stopped traffic. Lover was trying to weave around the cars and trucks to get to an exit.

This exit

He was not a patient man and Harley's aren't made to sit in traffic. We were almost to the exit, passing a fully stopped 18 wheeler, us in the breakdown lane when the trucker suddenly cut his tires out in front of us. That was not a nice thing for him to do. He was at a complete stop and nothing was moving. There was no danger and plenty of room for us in the breakdown lane. Him cutting his tire out suddenly that way could have caused us to go down. Lover was an excellent rider, so he dodged the tire then stopped and got off the bike. Normally I would get off when he got off because it sits lopsided and not real stable when its on the kickstand, but that time I stayed on the bike. There was a confrontation, it didn't come to blows, but I wonder what that trucker told his wife about why he soiled his drawers that day.

We made it to the exit before either the bike or the lover overheated. The exit took us on an old highway and then back to the interstate. The old highway brought us through a little town.

This little town.

Usually, when folks visit ghost towns, they go because they want to visit a ghost town. It's an entirely different experience when you just randomly happen upon one.

The sign we passed, led us to believe the town was inhabited.  Notice the curfew addon.

The sign was obviously quite old. We saw literally no people. Not one person. At first we didn't notice then we both at once realized that nothing was open and most of the stores were boarded up. It was an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. We rode down the main street and our pipes broke the spooky silence like a hundred bikes coming through. At the very outer edge of town there was a store open. An old type general store with well worn wood floors and the oldest working pop machine I have ever seen. We saw a couple of people. We found out that Cotton Plant used to have close to 2000 people living there. Now, nobody. I could go into all the reasons why but none of them would make it any less sad. I am heading out for Colorado at first light. More about that tomorrow.