North West Arkansas best asphalt route to Southern Tier Route? (no Mississippi)

[Ryld]

I am not eager to cycle the hill Country Arkansas route to the Mississippi route to connect with the southern Tier route.

 I rather cycle mostly straight south from North West Arkansas to New Orleans to connect to the Southern Tier East West Route and ride to the Florida Keys.

What route would you recommend that is somewhat straight to New Orleans From Fayetteville, Arkansas?

Thanks!

[John Nettles]

You don't say why you don't want to do those routes.  Is it hill, gravel, lack of X service??  When do you plan to ride?  Hotel/camping?  Eat out/cook your food?

Anyway, about 10 years ago, I did a tour from New Orleans to Tulsa with a mix of camping and hotels.  I reviewed the traffic counts a couple of years and made a couple of adjustments to the original route. 

While it is not as direct as you want, see if this works.  The route went from NO>Baton Rouge>New Roads>Natchitoches>Logansport>New Boston>Panama.  From there, I have routes that go to Fayetteville via Westville or Winslow but as you know, both are hilly. A small portion (less than 2 miles) of rideable gravel rarely.

If this works for you and you seriously think you will do that route, let me know and I will create some RWGPS routes for you based on that.  I don't have the time to put in all the services as just creating the routes will take about 8 hours.  However, I could also send you the GPX data but it is based on the original route.  My cue sheets are only northbound so that won't help you.

Tailwinds, John

[Ryld]

Thanks for the advice. I am riding a skinny tire road bike so I am avoiding any gravel wherein it might get rough and pinch flat my road tire. I’m bike packing not pannier weighted my bike with gear was 30-35 pounds when I did transam - washed clothes most every night and air dried them in my tent since I had almost zero extra changes of clothes. Of course if you are pannier riding with fatty tires it is fine to tour Arkansas on gravel with little traffic. I have ridden all over Arkansas so I am not super interested in riding the bicycle to Memphis from the west side of the state. I have not ridden Oklahoma much and Google maps shows one route going South that includes a lot through the Eastern side of Oklahoma which I might go by. I’m rather not veer all the miles west to Tulsa- but Oklahoma seems more favorable than Arkansas since I have seen most all of Arkansas already.

I want to ride to in June and plan to camp or ask random people to let me camp in thier yard. This worked well for my TransAm ride- I even slept in a small wood house in Virginia behind the generous family’s house that they said use to house the slaves. (They bought the house so it was not their grea great great grand dads slaves)


 The simple route is rent a car or put the bike on a bus and go to Memphis Tennessee and take the established Mississippi Trail route south until I get to the Southern tier route. But I want to do it all on the bicycle and not pay for a train or rental car. The reason I want to avoid paying 400 dollars to rent a car is I am cheap. The reason I am avoiding bus rides is possibly getting bike damage in the boot  and my dislike for bus rides and stations. The reason do not going via Amtrack is the high cost and the hassale with finding an amtrack route that will have room and allow for a bike (not all amtrack trains/routes allow bicycles.

I see 3 routes on Google maps bike route to there. But yes a person who knows the less trafficked route is better than a Google map route.