49 – Poteau, OK (512 miles) | 2014 Four Corners

I have a picture from Knob Hill, KY that I mislabeled so it didn’t get into yesterday’s post.

Abraham Lincoln lived here for 5 years 1811-1816

Time to start heading home with a bit of a purpose (as evidenced by the number of miles I rode) as we have to get ready for our trip to Canada at the end of the month. I was up early and helmet on (Missouri has a helmet law) I was on the road by 7:00. While I was in Myrtle Beach I got one of those “states I’ve been to” maps to stick on the back of the trailer. Today I will add Illinios, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. I didn’t ride through very much of Illinois though; at the most it was one mile. First I crossed the Ohio River into Illinois, then the Mississippi River into Missouri. Here is what it looked like.

Crossing the Ohio River into Illinois

This is the Mississippi River crossing into Missouri

This is mostly farm land out here. I don’t know what kind of fields they were working on, or what they were spraying but the crop dusters were out in force. When I saw the first one, I risked life and limb (loose gravel dirt road) to get some good pictures. I must have seen 15 more over that 100 miles. I stopped one more time to get some shots of another one (close to the road this time) and didn’t even bother with the closest one that was flying right over the road I was on. I probably would have gotten some of whatever he was spraying on me, it was that close. I don’t guess crop dusters use flaggers to mark their runs anymore with GPS and all the sophisticated avionics available. Did you know they can carry up to 800 gallons??

Nice rolling road through some of the Missouri and Arkansas farm lands.

I know it’s a dangerous job dodging the power lines and trees; not to mention the exposure to all those chemicals, but it sure looks like they’re having fun up there.

How early do you think you need to be on the crop duster guy’s calendar? Would you have to get on his calendar before you planted your crop so it could be fertilized or pesticided (my own word) at the right time??? Just thoughts from the road, if I’d seen someone that looked like a farmer I’d have asked, but they’re likely all working. These guys were sure busy today.

Lined up, polished and ready to go to work.

I wonder if local farmers harvest their own crops anymore. I’ve ridden past a thousand farms and very few of them have any type combine visible. I guess they could all be in a barn somewhere, but I think mostly they hire a harvest crew that comes out and does the work. OR – maybe this is a combine storage area and these all belong to lots of individual farmers.

One more thing today that kinda made me smile. I passed a convoy of school buses (3 or 4) and support vehicles full of camping gear all headed to “camp”. The kids came over to the left side of the bus and waved, thumbs up, etc. It reminded me of when we would be riding in the bus somewhere and we would all try to get the semi drivers to honk their air horns. Do the big trucks even have that air horn chain over the driver side door anymore? It’s probably all electronic these days & nobody under 40 even knows what that left arm gesture means….

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