Clockwise — south on AR-23 (Pig Trail) first through the best section
All Curl, No Straight
Nineteen miles of Arkansas Highway 23 with hardly a straight in them — and a roof of hardwoods over the whole thing.
The Pig Trail is the stretch of AR-23 that climbs through the Boston Mountains in the Ozark National Forest: nineteen relentlessly serpentine miles under an arch of trees, eleven hundred feet of climb, the kind of road where you forget what a straightaway is for. Nobody fully agrees how it got the name — wild hogs on the old open range, the shortcut Razorback students ran before I-40 opened in '75, or just the way it curls like a pig's tail. Take your pick. Two cautions the Ozarks insist on: rain turns these steep, crooked grades genuinely dangerous, and there's no fuel and spotty cell on the byway, so gas up and check the bike before you climb. The marquee season is October, when the canopy goes to fire.
Start with a big plate at The Big Biscuit in Fayetteville — biscuits and gravy, generous to a fault, the right ballast for a day of being thrown around. Top off before you leave town, then run east on AR-16 to Brashears, where the Pig Trail peels off south into the trees.
The byway winds down to meet the Mulberry River — a clear, cool, boulder-strewn National Wild and Scenic River running through some of the densest black-bear country in the state. Pull off at the crossing, stretch, and let the forest do its work.
Lunch at the Arkansas Brewing Company in Ozark, at the foot of the Pig Trail — an honest River Valley bar-and-grill menu (closed Monday and Tuesday, so plan around it). Fuel up in town, then close the loop the long way: east on US-64 to Clarksville, north on AR-21 back up into the Boston Mountains, and west on AR-16 toward home.
Back to Fayetteville for dinner at Hugo's, a basement burger institution just off the square since 1977 — funky, dark, low-ceilinged, and home to what a lot of Arkansans will swear is the best burger in the state. Sleep at the Inn at the Mill in Johnson, a boutique hotel built around a nineteenth-century water mill — reputedly the longest-running business in Arkansas — with the old hand-hewn beams still in the rooms.
And hold the route loosely — the Ozarks reward it. The plan's a backbone, not a cage, and half the magic out here is the gravel forest road you take on a whim, the swimming hole on the Mulberry, the country store with a porch full of bikes at noon. Wander — just watch the wet leaves and loose gravel on the steep stuff, and never ride this road hard in the rain. The best stop on a day like this is almost always the one that wasn't on the list. Go find it.
