It's nice to travel off the beaten path sometimes to see what you can find:

At The Hop


The signs of spring in Arkansas in past several weeks have been unmistakable. The redbud trees have been in bloom, the robins have returned, the weather has gotten warmer—and the motorheads have been pulling their bikes out of winter storage and hitting the road in ever-increasing numbers.

On a recent Friday evening I carefully loaded a folded set of church clothes into the trunk on my own motorcycle, stowed a new set of women’s size-medium rain gear in my port-side saddlebag, and bungee-corded a backpack containing other luggage onto the pillion seat for the hundred-odd-mile ride to Mom and Dad’s house. Work and school had kept me too busy to do much on the weekends since Christmas. Now I was finally going to take a weekend to go home for a visit.

The rain gear was there just in case. Actually the weekend forecast called for nothing but warm and sunny weather. Saturday morning arrived cool and with a heavy overcast. Dad and I decided that we would try an ambitious ride that day anyway. Mom stayed home fighting a cold.

Almost any route you take to the tourist center of Hot Springs has beautiful scenery. We followed a less-traveled highway that took us through several backwoods crossroads communities. At one crossroads we saw a barbecue stand called the Rib Cage. At another we stopped and waited for a convoy of vehicles pulling trailers loaded with four-wheel ATVs. There must have been dozens of four-wheelers, all headed in the same direction. Evidently bikers aren’t the only ones with riding clubs.

We met quite a few other motorcyclists, of course, though not as many as we might have expected. Evidently the cool weather and chancy skies bluffed many out. Happily we never saw a single drop of rain.

Though we mostly kept to the foothills and valleys, we did ride over Jack Mountain. On a previous ride Dad had taken it easy going over the mountain, in deference to my relative lack of experience. This time he didn’t baby me. He took the turns at speed, except where slowing down was an absolute must, trusting me to keep up. I did.

At Hot Springs we skirted around the city, passing through its suburban hinterland. It’s still largely rural, with a scattering of modest-sized developments sitting at the foot of steep, wooded ridges. We saw a new retirement village sitting cheek by jowl with a much older mobile home park. Apart from occasional eyesores of this sort, even Hot Springs’ suburbs tend to look scenic.

From Hot Springs we headed toward the town of Glenwood, along a lovely stretch of Highway 70 that I’d never traveled before. Outside Glenwood we stopped at a handy highway rest area, something one seldom sees beside a two-lane highway. When I came out of the restroom I saw Dad staring appreciatively at one of the building’s walls. Dad spent many years as a mason before undertaking a late second career working at a collision-repair shop. He still views any brick wall he sees with a critical eye. It’s rare to hear him speak as approvingly of a wall as he did about this one. Dad has always been something of a perfectionist at his work.

It was almost one in the afternoon. We were ready to stop somewhere for lunch. Dad told me as we left the rest area to keep an eye out for something unusual coming up on the left. On a previous trip with Mom he had spotted a welder’s shop with a collection of folk-art metal sculptures.

We found these a couple of hilltops away and stopped beside the road to observe them. There was a rearing horse made all of scrap metal. A large globe. A life-sized crucifix. A distinctive likeness of Batman standing there with his cape spread. And other objects I was not able to identify clearly. Somebody had put a lot of time and effort into that work.

On the other side of the road we found that we had stopped right in front of a small brick restaurant. It looked like it had originally been a Hardee’s or other chain eatery. Now it appeared to be under local management under the name “The Hop.” A sign beside it said “Bikers Welcome”. Sure enough, we saw a big Kawasaki parked right beside the building. We decided we’d give it a try, so we parked our bikes in the lot and geared down to go inside.

The interior walls were covered with movie posters and record album covers sizes. They mostly dated from the 1950s and early 1960s. A section of one wall was devoted to Elvis. The most prominent likeness there showed Elvis mounted astride a Harley-Davidson. Nearby was a playbill-sized poster advertising Elvis and Ann-Margret in “Viva Las Vegas.” Decorations shaped like 45-RPM records hung from the ceiling.

There were only a about half a dozen customers inside at the moment, so we had no problem finding a table even in such a small place. After we placed our orders Dad called Mom over his cell phone to let her know where we were. I looked around at the other diners to try to figure out who the Kawasaki outside belonged to. The likeliest suspect was the heavily-bearded fellow who stepped out from behind the grill briefly. Of course you never know—bikers don’t always look like bikers. I’m pretty good proof of that.

Our food arrived in baskets of the sort that used to be so common at local burger joints. Dad found his cheeseburger too drippy. That’s a big deal for him—he won’t go to Wendy’s for anything. I was quite pleased with my “Southwestern Burger”, which turned out to be a combination hamburger and barbecue sandwich.

Several more customers came in while we ate. They included a middle-aged couple in a Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible. As we got up to leave, Dad went over to speak with them. It turned out that his boss, Jim, had recently gotten a Cabriolet convertible to fix up. It needed a left quarter panel. Jim had been trying to find one that didn’t have a whole car attached. The wife suggested that he speak with her brother. He was a master Volkswagen mechanic; he was probably working on a new dune buggy project that very afternoon.

She offered to call her brother right then and there. So she stepped outside with her cell. A minute later she came back in saying that he thought he could find what Jim needed. She wrote a name and number down on a napkin and handed it to Dad. We thanked them and headed out. It had been a friendly place to eat.

Outside we noticed that the sun appeared to be trying to break through the clouds. We geared up and rode on through Glenwood, crossed the Caddo River, and turned onto another highway. Another minute or so of riding took us across a beautiful valley spanned by the state’s longest wooden railroad trestle. It’s one of the prettiest spots around Glenwood, although I haven’t been able to look at it in quite the same way ever since I had an accident there while learning to ride in 2008.

But I’m a more seasoned rider now, and we had no problems. Soon we’d left Glenwood and The Hop behind. We still had a long ride home.