The Roads Between the Camps
The non-rider driving route is live in the Rider Guide, and it keeps growing. Here is how to use it, and what is waiting along the way.
Tuesday morning, October 6, the Graveler rolls out of Jonesboro and the gravel takes over. Camp packs up behind you. A little while later, somebody pulls out of the lot by Centennial Bank Stadium with a full tank and the whole day in front of them.
They came for everything except the pedaling, and I want them to have a good week too.
So, I built them a route, too. It's also in the Rider Guide, under Before You Arrive: the non-rider driving route, paved roads, camp to camp, Jonesboro all the way down to Arkansas City. Open it in Google Maps for turn-by-turn, and bookmark the page for quick reference.
The route gets you to camp. The pins are why you leave early. Day one, you'll pass Big O's Ribs before you get to Birdeye and the turn into Village Creek State Park.
Day two, on the way to Mississippi River State Park, Delta Q & Deli is on North Washington Street in Forrest City, right on the route, about when you'll want lunch if you left after breakfast. The pins keep going from there, through Helena and Stuttgart and down to the river at Arkansas City.
We're not done adding them, either. Every time one of us drives a stretch, sits down with somebody in a host town, or gets told about a place by someone who lives there, it goes on the map. What you open next Monday will have stops that weren't there this week, and it'll keep evolving while we're on the road.
The map is a start. These are working towns, built on farming, shipping, schools, and the businesses that keep all of that going, and most of what makes them worth stopping in will never have a pin. Walk the main street. Get gas where the regulars are standing around the counter. Eat lunch wherever the work trucks are parked. Ask the person ringing you up where they'd go, then go there. If you find a place that ought to be on the map, tell one of us at camp that night or send it through the contact page. A lot of what's on there now got there exactly that way.
Thursday, October 8, is Helena, and King Biscuit Blues Festival admission comes with every non-rider registration. Get downtown early. The Delta Cultural Center tells the story of this music and the place that made it, and it's a short walk from the festival.
Non-riders get to every camp ahead of the field, so the afternoon is yours. Take it slow. Sit at the counter instead of the booth. Stay for the second cup. People out here are glad you came, and plenty of them will tell you so if you give them a minute.
Come evening we're all back together: dinner on the long tables, music, the fire. The riders will have their gravel stories. Some of the best ones at the table come from whoever drove, about a place nobody else stopped.
