My Arkansas road trips generally begin early and end late. For me, it's not a true road trip unless you have three meals in independently owned restaurants. No chains allowed.

Dr. Leo Crafton of Conway and I leave Little Rock at 7 a.m., bound for southwest Arkansas. Breakfast is at Southfork Truck Stop at the Gurdon exit off Interstate 30. Southfork has been around for more than 40 years, and it's hard to find a more complete breakfast menu. I can even have grilled bologna along with the usual selection of bacon, sausage or ham.

There's everything on the menu from steak and eggs to the South Carolina specialty of shrimp and grits. This is the only restaurant I know where one can order catfish and grits for breakfast. It seems uniquely Arkansan to have catfish on a breakfast menu. I don't remember having had catfish for breakfast. But when I do, it will be at Southfork.

We spend as little time as possible during my road trips on boring interstate highways. After breakfast, Leo and I make our way to U.S. 67 and take it through Gurdon and Prescott to Hope. In Arkansas, U.S. 67 stretches from the Texas border at Texarkana to the Missouri border at Corning. It passes through 13 counties, following the route of what once was known as the Southwest Trail. The Arkansas portion of the highway covers about 280 miles.

U.S. 67 begins on the Mexican border at Presidio, Texas, and ends in Iowa.

"As the U.S government began improving travel through the territory, a military road was constructed from Missouri through Little Rock and south to Fulton on the Red River," Steve Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "This road became known as the Southwest Trail and was the first land route created in Arkansas. When the Cairo & Fulton Railroad began surveying a route to connect southern Illinois to the Red River across Missouri and Arkansas, the same route was used.

"The railroad became Iron Mountain and was then acquired by Missouri Pacific. The route is still used by Union Pacific. . . . Federal and state funding became available for highways in the 1920s as automobile and truck traffic was beginning to take the place of rail traffic. The roads that became U.S. 67 were........

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