Today was another tourist day, so it gave us a chance to sleep in - a little. We've been dodging the rain since we left, and I guess I can't really complain, as we are in the path of some of the worst storms passing through Texas and into the middle of the country. As we keep moving north and west, we should be passing outside of the path of destruction. So, this morning was a little drizzly, but the rain was stopped when we hit the road for the 7-mile ride to Onyx Cave. The motorcycle ride down the hill to the cave was awesome, really steep, narrow and twisty. I was looking forward to the ride back up. The cave itself was nice. It looked like a little one man operation, with headsets and self-guided stations explaining the cave. Since it was early, Jody and I had the cave to ourselves and thoroughly enjoyed taking our time going through.
     The forecast was for a mid-morning shower, and we were trying to make it the 20 miles to Cosmic cavern before the rain .   Almost, but not quite, we had to stop just outside of Onyx Cave to put on the rainsuits. We arrived at Cosmic Cavern, which has a very steep driveway, and the parking spots were all on a severe slant. As we struggled to figure out how to perch the motorcycle so it wouldn't fall over, I happened to finally notice the perfectly level patch of recently poured concrete with the sign above it marked "Motorcycle Parking" - duh.   I made sure I thanked the lady at the counter for making motorcycle parking available. She said there had just been one too many incidents of falling motorcycles and they had just recently added the concrete pad.
     The tour of Cosmic Cavern was awesome. The guide was an older gentleman - I say "older", but he was probably about the same age as me - and he had been part of this cave for the last 42 years. He had done a lot of the discovery and exploration of the newer sections.. His stories were great, Instead of the typical historical and geological stories told by most guides, he was able to tell us about his escapades in the discovery and exploration he had done over these years .    This is a flooded cave, with pools of standing water at the lowest part. There is also a 2.5 hour Wild Cave Tour offered occasionally, which sounded like great fun, but requires a change of clothes and shoes as some time is spent wading through water, and then some time is spent crawling through the red clay.   Just a little too rugged with our limited clothing resources on the bike.
     By the time we got out of Cosmic Cavern, the rain had subsided, and we headed for the Tram station to book the guided historical Eureka Springs tour. The tram had broken on the last tour, and they were scrambling to figure out what to do for us. So instead of the open air tram, they took us out on an air-conditioned trolley. No one complained.. The narrator was a local guy named Tim Garrison who had been born and raised here - he was also my age. The tour was great, showing some of the more significant buildings in Eureka Springs, and telling some of the history. There were two stops, one at the Crescent Hotel which was still in operation and looked about the same as it had in the 1920's . The other stop was at one of the springs and it was surprising how cool it was inside the spring cutout even though it was barely underground.
     After the tram tour, we spent a couple of hours wandering around the shops. We talked to some of the locals and everyone was just so nice. Jody talked to some of the local jewelry makers, we had coffee in a little coffee shop run by a couple of old hippies who looked like they just stepped out of the 1960's. Eureka Springs is really just a wonderful little town to visit, and I;m so glad we came here. There were quite a few motorcycles around, and I know I would thoroughly enjoy spending more time riding around the hills.
    As 5 o'clock approached, we started looking for somewhere to eat. We were trying to decide whether to just eat downtown, or find somewhere on the way back to the cottage. Looking on Tripadvisor, the #1 rated restaurant was a place called Cafe Amore - Italian food and it was on our way back to the cottage. The food was excellent, lasagne for me and manicotti for Jody. And our waiter was such fun - though his name escape me. We talked about our trip and he was impressed that we could do it all on the motorcycle. So we left him with the link to this blog so he could follow our escapades.
     We left Cafe Amore just in time as the rain was just beginning. Made it back to the room just a little wet and cold. We'll just have to fire up the jacuzzi and I'm sure that will warm us up. Tomorrow should be an easy day with a train ride planned in Branson, and an overnight stopover in Willow Springs, MO on our way to St Louis.

55.7 miles today
1508.8 miles total

0.0 gallons today
36.021 gallons total