Heading South: Escaping Winter, One Bike Trail at a Time (Part 1)

1nonblonde
Dec 1, 2025
3 min read

October 2025: We rolled out of Loveland early Monday morning - the kind of early where you question whether caffeine is a beverage or a cry for help. While we absolutely will not miss the nightly lullaby of traffic noise serenading us at Loveland RV Resort, we will miss the close proximity to our family, friends, and favorite breweries (not necessarily in that order).

Still, winter was coming… and we are simply not built for shoveling snow anymore. So southbound we went!

Stop #1: Shiloh Vineyards & Winery - Wakeeney, KS

Our first night on the road landed us at Shiloh Vineyards and Winery, a Harvest Host stay tucked into the rolling Kansas plains.

Naturally, we kicked things off with a couple of wine flights (as one does when one is avoiding freezing to death in Colorado). The owners were delightful - and the best part? We learned that SHE is the aunt of one of Darren’s high school classmates!

Because of course… Kansas is basically vast plains full of plot twists.

Stop #2: Blowing Springs RV Park - Bella Vista, Arkansas

(Yes, Arkansas, but all the signs here insist on abbreviating it AK - as if Alaska won’t notice.)

We settled in for a two-night stay in Bella Vista, just outside Bentonville, a town famous for three things:

Walmart
Bike trails
The HGTV show Fixer to Fabulous with Dave & Jenny Marrs

Naturally, we went for the trifecta.

Riding the Razorback Greenway & Wishing Springs Trail

These trails are so smooth and scenic that even your thighs forget they haven't done a squat since 2012. Bentonville is basically the Disneyland of biking - they are literally the new home for the U.S. Olympic Mountain Bike Team, and there are trails in places you wouldn’t even expect trails to be. Parking lot? Trail. Backyard? Trail. Under your RV? Probably a trail.

Brews & Bingo – Rendezvous Junction Brewing Co. (Rogers, AR)

We enjoyed an excellent couple of flights. Bingo was fun too - even though we didn’t win. (We suspect collusion.)

Dinner at Big Orange

This place had really tasty food with big flavor. The service, though… well, bless their hearts. Our server seemed overwhelmed, or perhaps caught in a Taco Tuesday time warp. Either way, the food redeemed the experience, so we left full and only mildly confused.

More Biking in Bentonville

Because apparently our legs were writing checks our butts would later cash.

Bentonville truly surprised us:

Mountain bike/off-road trails everywhere - even art museums have trails wrapping around them.
Gorgeous museums like Crystal Bridges (seriously, this place is stunning).
A Frank Lloyd Wright house - which we missed touring because we arrived too late. (Wright would understand. Maybe.)
Heavy cultural investment from the Walton/Walmart family, with grandkids focused on biking and the arts, respectively.
Taco & Tamale Co. for lunch - delicious and quick.
The Walmart Museum - tiny but adorable.
Ice cream at the Spark Café - because history is always more interesting with a waffle cone.
Great murals, boutiques, bookshops, and Marrs on Main for the HGTV fans.

Bentonville is basically if Portland, Austin, and a mountain bike had a baby and raised it inside a museum.

Biking the Exterior of the Ledger Building

One of the wildest experiences was biking up the outside of The Ledger, Bentonville’s iconic “bikeable building.”

Imagine a six-story office building designed like a giant, modernist parking garage ramp - but sleek, stylish, and absolutely begging for cyclists to show off quads of steel. The ramps zig-zag around the exterior, allowing you to literally bike to the top floor without ever going inside.

We pedaled our way up (slowly, dramatically, wheezily), and the views were totally worth it:

A sweeping panorama of downtown Bentonville
Art sculptures sprinkled around neighboring buildings
Riders zipping along trails below
That perfect mix of urban energy + small-town charm

The whole thing felt like biking up a very fancy, very Instagrammable spiral staircase. And no, we did not break any land-speed records getting to the top - but we looked cool pretending we did.

BONUS: Scenes from the Road

Wide fields of fluffy white cotton
Crossing the mighty Mississippi River
Swarms of gnats/midges forming ominous little clouds along the roadside
- (They do not pay rent. They do not care about your windshield.)