Going Home

So this is it, the last day. We had coffee and tiny bran muffins at the Super-8, gassed up and headed for the Hudson River. I had to add some oil this morning so the Massey must have used some during the hot days this last week. Dave's GPS was cranky and could find places on the map this morning but could not tell us how to get there. So we checked the map and started off anyway. Later this morning it started behaving again so we got a couple interesting back roads to ride on. But for the most part it was off through the Catskills, through Kingston and over the Hudson, then straight north on 9 to 22. We stopped for lunch at a local diner that also sold grass fed beef (you could see the "not yet dead" beef cattle feeding on the grass out the window). We were now pretty much backtracking the roads we had started on a week and a half ago. We took 9 into Vermont, did a loop around the Bennington Monument (Dave says it was not actually fought in Bennington but New York somewhere), and stopped at Hemming Motor News. I had never been here before and this is a neat place. It is a working gas station and they clean the windshield and check the oil, just like way back when in the good old days. They also have a great souvenir shop for motor-heads. If you ever need one of those real metal signs that say Ford or Chevy or "The Busted Knuckle Garage, Repair and Despair under One Roof", this is the place. Dave took me out back and they had a bunch of restored motorcycles and cars (and some outboard motors) from throughout the 1900s. Dave's old Whizzer he had when he was a teen (one just like it) was hanging from the ceiling and a restored Triumph Bonneville 750 (Dave and I both had older Triumphs than this one) was on the floor. Maybe we should have hung onto all that stuff!!!

So it was time to say goodbye. I was turning left in Wilmington to go north on Rt 100 and Dave was heading east down the mountain to Brattleboro. He has an infestation of aliens in his basement and had to get home to build a spaceship. I called him tonight and he said he and his 4 year old grandson had routed out any aliens using headlamps, I suppose so they could sneak up on them.

I headed north on 100 and ended up daydreaming past my turn and ended up in Manchester, so I took yucky Rt 7 to below Middlebury and then Rt 116 home.

My odometer showed I had been 3400 miles since I left home so we did a bit more than last year miles wise.

So Dave's new GPS really changed how we traveled compared to the previous year in that it took us on lots of hidden roads we would have otherwise missed (like the one with grass in the middle). The radios worked great as well and we didn't get sick of talking to each other (although come to think of it, there were a few hours when I couldn't talk to Dave, hmmm).

Once again, everyone we met in these hidden valleys and towns were kind and helpful and interested in these 2 "Yankees" from up north. And once again, it felt good to be back home. So the next trip will be.....

Wilkes-Barre (not so nice)

Last night we stayed at a really cheap motel and Dave got a kick out of the Indian guy laughing at me when I asked if there was a AAA discount. I really couldn't read the bill without my reading specs so didn't realize how cheap it was to begin with ($34). No frills here, but clean and quiet.

Today we tried to both get some miles under our belts so I could get back in time to see Hannah before she headed to California and still see a little PA and NY country side. We also had an ugly wet looking storm headed our way so we bolted early for Harrisburg and beat the storm (it passed just behind us, I love weather radar on the iPhone). Then we turned north and ran through some PA back roads and found mostly dead farms but a few live ones (Holsteins). It is amazing how you get off a main secondary road with wall to wall trucks, turn left, climb a little hill and you are on a nice back road with no traffic. A lot of these little back roads have filled out with commuter houses, but there is still a lot of country side left. Again the farms are gone but the fields get mowed for hay (big round bales). So the mid-day was pleasant in the rolling country side, but Wilkes-Barre was ahead of us so we told the GPS to get us through it, thinking she would find some tricky side roads. Pocahontas let us down. She actually did exactly what we told her to do, find the minimum distance through Wilkes-Barre. We saw every gritty back street and neighborhood in stop and go traffic and finally made it out the other side.

Some more pretty back roads before crossing into New York. This part of NY is Sullivan County which is not so well off. We decided to land in Monticello NY where for some reason there were a bunch of motels. The reason is there is a casino here and the town is in the midst of face lifting itself so planters on the street, a few nice looking buildings, some new pavement. It is 89 miles to NYC so it looks like they are trying to spiff the town up to get tourists up. There is also a race track (surrey / horse) that looked active. You can still see the rough edges of town but they are half way to a nice face-lift.

Dave borrowed my taxi driver bead seat to try it out. He said tonight the damage was already done, but sounds like it might be an improvement. I missed it today since we were dripping hot during the Wilkes-Barre debacle.

We stopped and got some oil for my bike (only needed a cup or so) at an auto parts store that was hopping with locals standing around telling jokes and solving the political problems of the state. A guy chatted up Dave outside who had a Triumph (triple so it was a new one) and was riding it to an air show in Oshkosh, WI later this summer. He said would be easier than last when he flew a bi-plane up there. He could only carry 17 gallons of gas and stopped every 150 miles to re-fuel. You meet the most interesting people just walking around.

So a not so interesting day focused on getting home. Another Super-8 motel (clean and Wi-Fi) and hit the local diner for our last dinner out on the trip. The plan is for both of us to get to our respective homes tomorrow night.

Close call

We left the ashtray in Pearisburg (our hotel), and stopped for some breakfast. We met a guy who picked off our Vermont tags and asked how we liked our Senator Sanders. I was ready for the usual "socialist rant" but this guy liked Bernie a lot. "Not a Republican or a Democrat". Wow, go Bernie. If you can impress these southern boys, you must be on the right track..

We headed east toward Blacksburg and then north through more lonely, smooth roads. For the first time we saw actual working farms in the valleys between the ridges. Beef, Holsteins (dairy) and hay (presumably for horses). We had the roads to ourselves, except for the critters. The first wake up call was a woodchuck who's trajectory according to my trigonometry calcs should have intercepted the leading edge of my new Bridgestone tires and resulted in me hitting him between the third and 4th rib bone on his port side. I missed and then realized I got a C in trig so..

The second incident was really scary. I was following Dave doing about 50 when I just caught sight of a deer about 2 feet in front of me. I could hear his hoves scratching the pavement to get by. If I had hit him, I would not even have had time to put my fingers on the brakes. So I guess hitting deer is just a fate thing.

We actually saw a lot of deer in these last couple of days and again the radios are nice for warning the guy behind.

We stopped for lunch in a tiny town at a corner store that had gas but no high-test so we put in the more pingy stuff (which worked fine). One kid was running the cash register, pumps and deli and was busy but cool as a cucumber. We chatted with and older couple who raved about how nice West Virginia was. His comment was that "West Virginia is wasted on the West Virginians". So I guess the inter-state animosity thing is here as well. After things settled down (the lunch crowd of 3 had finished), we got talking to him about maple syrup because he was selling Virginia maple syrup. He said he had helped a neighbor this year and they set 2000 taps. The sap ran from mid February to mid-March and it was mostly B. His wife had come in pregnant with a head covering and after noticing the brochures about Mennonites, we realized, this was a Mennonite couple and I would guess this valley had a small community of them. Again, really nice guy.

I kept thinking that as we pushed north into PA, the nice back roads would start tapering off but we saw no shortage today.

We zipped through Maryland (pretty narrow part here) and pulled into Bedford, PA. We stopped at a motel and got a clean room for $34.00, the cheapest room yet but clean. Yet another motel owned by an Indian (not the American type) family. Very nice.

We got dinner at a local restaurant where a girls softball team had just won a game (they were all smiling) so it was family night for dinner.

We are shooting to get back Wednesday night so I can say good bye to my daughter Hannah Thursday morning when her plane leaves for California (summer job). We have a couple long days ahead.

Dirt (and Grass) Roads Day

We started in Spruce Pine, NC and let Dave's GPS take us north. Today she took us 4 wheeling. Had a nice chat with a local North Carolina guy who was a local, retired but spent his winters in New Mexico. We get the impression from the contractor boys last night (who woke us up at 4:30 this morning with their truck backup alarms) that they get half as much snow as we do, but like us, it varies from year to year. Enough so you need all the winter stuff like 4WD, snow tires, salt, etc. This is in the mountains of course. From talking to folks down low, they get a lot less but still enough to need plows. Dave gave the NC-NM guy some syrup which like the others, leaves a big impression. We still have not met anyone who was not really decent, helping and interested in us Yankees. I asked the boys last night how many generations 'til you are not a Yankee and you can guess the answer.

So Pocohontas gave us another 5 star tour through back roads not on the way to anywhere. Today her reputation was tarnished a bit when she dumped on a dirt road on top of a mountain with grass growing in the middle. Fortunately, a local truck driver on his 4 wheeler (pull start) stopped by and told us how to get back to blacktop. He had his dog, wife, cooler and 4 year old daughter (very cute) all loaded on the 4-wheeler and they were going camping for the night. Again, amazingly nice guy, very helpful and very interested that these 2 Yankees showed up in the middle of the woods. Dave gave him syrup too, which as it turned out they needed for "flapjacks". These folks look rough outside sometimes but they have a heart of gold.

We took the shorter route back to the blacktop which had my ABS system working overtime sliding down the hills through gravel, and back to blacktop, as promised. Now something to point out down here is that almost every little road is paved. Most of the little grey roads are paved 1-1/2 lane jobs. A lot of roads have n painted lines on them so I found myself being surprised after hours of these back roads to suddenly come out on a "painted" road. It felt like hitting a freeway. Another note to our congressman, all of these roads are in amazing shape. No potholes or cracks in the roads. No tire trenches from the big trucks that collect water. Somehow these states all have roads in great shape. It will be painful to go home to Rt116 with potholes, cracks and crevices, etc. There are a lot of 4 lane highways here that do not seem to connect anything very big, and have little traffic. We should haul some of that money up north to Vermont and fix our roads (actually I would love a bus or train system instead but..)

So the hotel is the last story today. We hit bottom. Pearisburg (not spelled Parisburg (damn frenchies)) as one women said has nothing in it. The kids get in a lot of trouble, leave town, etc (according to here). What it has a ton of is backpackers which are everywhere and worst than backpackers they are AT end-to-enders so they smell bad and are covered with grime and eat like wolverines (saw a guy polishing off an entire box of Little Debbie cookies (for dessert). So the hotel we stayed at was basically one large ashtray with some beds sprinkled in. When I asked if the room was smoking or non smoking he said "either way" and left it at that. He was an amazingly nice guy and even offered us his car to run errands if we were sick of riding the bikes. So I found something black with legs on my pillow but only found the one (probably a scout). So $44.00 even for the night, no mention of taxes of any kind (hmmm). And no WiFi so no blog last night. Lights off, quick moment of silence to see if the critters were afoot and then off to sleep.

Blue Ridge Parkway Heaven

Left the Super8 in Gatlinburg after stopping at one of the thousand breakfast restaurants in town. Place with wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling. Decided to ride south over the hill to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We took the side road to the top of Clingmans Dome and hiked to the top where there is a tower you can climb and got a spectacular 360 degree view. It was early so the mountains looked "smoky" with the moisture in the air. We headed back down the other side and stopped in Ashville to get the Massey a new headlight. Found a huge dealership that had a Honda lamp or a Xenon lamp and went with the Xenon. Had to be careful not to get too close to the back of Dave's bike or it would melt the plastic on his back bumper. Also started a couple small grass fires along the side of the road. I found that if I put it on high beam there were less incidents of toasted squirrels.

Good thing I got the new bulb because the tunnels on the Blue Ridge get really dark, especially when your eyes have adjusted to the bright light outside. The Blue Ridge Parkway was nicer than we remembered from last year , the weather being so beautiful. Last year we had some rain and this year we did the lowest section which we skipped last year. Being the weekend there were lots of bikes, but not much traffic overall. Dave had me laughing so hard with a few jokes I almost ran off the road. These headsets are dangerous. The GPS got a rest since we pretty much stuck to the parkway. We decided to bury ourselves north of the parkway and landed in Spruce Pine, NC just south of Boone. Nice local motel with a friendly older woman behind the desk. Some of the locals ribbed us yankees a bit, but they were great guys. We think it was them that came in at 4:30 this morning from some all night work of some kind.The WiFi was not really worth messing with so we decided to hit a local Micky D's and update the blog over coffee. Another sunny beautiful day. The weather guy says we may hit something north of us, but so far not a drop of rain this trip.

Taming the Dragon

Today we didn't put on many miles (182) but we saw a lot of the Smoky Mountains. Our goal was to do the Tail of the Dragon road which is famous in motorcycle circles so having the most turns (318) in the fewest miles (11). What we were not aware of was that the Tail is the famous one but by no means the only amazing twisty vista studded road in the Smoky Mountains. We started the morning on the Cherohala Skyway out of Tellico Plains. The temperature this morning was in the lower 70s and perfect. We got up into the upper 80s when we hit the valley floors but for the most part it was in the 70s. Perfect. These roads are much like the Blue Ridge Parkway but sort of unknown (except the Dragon).

The Dragon is really only 11 miles and it starts at a shop in Deals Gap which sells lots of Dragon stuff (and cold drinks). There was a parking lot full of bikes. I was expecting mostly fast crotch-rocket type bikes but most everyone had Harleys. I gotta hand it to Harley, they sell a lot of bikes and if you walk around a parking lot full of harleys, it is hard to find 2 that are the same. As usual the handful of BMWs were like stinkbugs at a flower show, but there were a few. We talked up a guy from Florida who comes here once a year and wants to retire near here mostly for the weather and the better real estate market.

He mentioned northern Alabama but we were just there and no thanks. He did tip us off to another road that was amazing at the end of the Dragon called the Foothills Parkway. As we were standing around we saw a tractor-trailer go up the Dragon and

everybody seemed in awe at this as meeting this on a corner would effectively block the entire road. And guess what else there are lots of on this road. Lots and lots of police. The park had

them too which makes sense. This road attracts every yahoo over-juiced on testosterone with a 150hp rocket between their legs. There are also lots of Porsche and other high performance cars driving around in packs. We saw 3 Porsches pulled over by the Mounties at one point. We being above all that decided to suppress the urge.

After the Foothills Parkway we decided to drop into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and got lost for a couple hours. The GPS did not know anything about roads in the park and there was no cell service so we wandered around in the park. There are some beautiful one way "loops" with lots of pull offs at the best overlooks where people were having picnics and enjoying the quiet and beauty. The speed limit through the park is 30 mph so they slow everything down, which really lets you enjoy it.

So after finding our way out of the park, we headed north east and decided to find a motel in Gatlinburg TN. This town is a tourist town with lots of amusements, places to stay and lots of restaurants. Out for Mexican food (no lunch) and back to the hotel. Tomorrow we go ???

Alabama-Georgia-Tennessee (Tornado damage, yikes)

Today we rode through tornado ravaged northern Alabama and Georgia and then escaped the heat by heading back into the mountains of Tennessee. Another steamer so we held out for a while down low but then had to get some altitude to cool off. The destination being the twisty "Tail of the Dragon" road that straddles North Carolina and Tennessee. An added bonus was that before we get to the Dragon, we can also hit Cherohala Skyway on the way. No way we would make it all that way today and hit Alabama and Georgia, but we can setup nicely for it by landing in (or near) Tellico Plains.

We left a little earlier this morning from Kimall, TN to get more cooler air since the weather called for another scorcher. We headed back south into Alabama. Once south a bit, we let the GPS take the shortest route and once again we were treated with nicely paved back roads that are not on the way to anywhere. We have been getting nice "slice of life" pictures of how and where everyone lives this way and pop out at an "oasis" (gas, chain stores, etc) every 200 miles to get gas. Except for the heat, we kept commenting on how much like Vermont this looked. Again there were very few working farms but they were cutting a lot of grass (round bales) which keeps things tidy. Alabama and Tennessee were much poorer seeming than Georgia. One road sign I have to get in here that was pretty common in Kentucky was at what would here

be a stop sign. They add a little sign below the stop sign saying "Right Turn Keep Movin", and yes movin is spelled movin.

So Dave's bike "Millenium Falcon", must have had a server crash while it was downloading the gravitational maps and cross correlating them with the altimeter data load from today's projected trajectory. His gas gauge decided that it was empty after he filled it up. So back to using the odometer to figure out when he needs gas. My bike (the Massey-Furguson) blew the headlamp low beam this morning so all I have left is high beam. So I decide when to get gas and Dave drives ahead in the dark. Should work until we find a dealer. I tried the Massey dealer for a new bulb but they said it was too old...

We turned east at Scottsboro and rolled into Rainesville AL to see our first encounter with the aftermath of the tornadoes they have been experiencing. Sorta wakes you up to how serious these things are. Buildings turned to rubble and any kind of

signage destroyed. Trees uprooted everywhere. Our hearts go out to those folks who have to paw through the rubble, collect anything valuable and start over. Just amazing.

When we got to RingGold Ga, we saw a repeat of the same. So we are not sure if this is something that just happens from time to time down here, or this year has been a bad year. Scary stuff.

So we went east and north and entered the Chattahoochee National Forest. We followed the Ocoee chain of lakes which has tons of white water rafters, kayakers and tubers bumping and floating and many times swimming (on purpose or not) down this creek / river. We saw a sign that said this was the site 1996 Olympics kayaking competitions, and I can see why. We stopped in Copper Hill at a 50's diner for lunch. Life sized Elvis "in the building" which I posed with and thankfully the picture was too blurry to include here.

We headed north through the park on twisty sweepers and popped out some hours later at our destination Tellico Plains. Of course there was nothing there resembling a hotel so we went 20 miles north west to find something near the interstate.

A guy asked us tonight if we were heading for "the Dragon" and told us stories of bikes hanging from trees. So tomorrow we slay the dragon (if Dave doesn't run out of gas)....

KFC, 103 degrees and Alabama

Forget about how hot it was yesterday, today was a blast furnace!!

We got coffee this morning and then had a pleasant ride through more 1-1/2 lane paved back roads courtesy of Pocahontas (the GPS). The

patchwork fields were either mowed or being mowed and the smell of fresh grass in the cool morning air was sweet after the heat of the previous day. Dave got us to Corbin, which is the home of Colonel Sanders (yup, the Kentucky Fried Chicken mogel). The museum was a re-creation of his cafe (seats 40) with a modern KFC franchise attached to it.

He was a late bloomer and started a service station when he was 40, got the cafe running out back of the gas station, at age 65 the cafe failed because the interstate went through and he hit the road trying to start some franchises with his chicken recipe. At he tender age of 74, he sold the franchise business for $2M, and the rest is history. The town of Corbin seems pretty non-plused by all this. I was expecting something more like Dollywood (ChickenWood?) with a ColeSlawSlide water park or some other kind of rides (Mashed Potato Mountain or riding a drumstick down a river of greasy gravy, or something). So the lesson here is you can start a career anytime and never give up!!

From Corbin we let the GPS get send us south and once again we were rewarded with more single lane paved beauties. And the temperature started going up!!

The further south we got, the more hardscrabble things got. We saw more out of business business' than ones still in business. Gas stations with MiniMarts are doing well, and WalMarts with all the chain restaurants are sprinkled in enough places to chock out any local business'. We did see a lot of deer processing and taxidermy places so those seems to be doing ok.

There is a long flat valley in southern Tennessee that we went the length of and it was in this gash that we saw the temperature hit 103 on Daves bike. I ran with just a t-shirt which may or may have helped.

We crossed the border and into the really dead town of Bridgeport Alabama. There was only one motel run by a guy that did not speak English. He either did not have a room with 2 beds or he was trying to explain to us how the inner workings of spaceships work, we were not sure which, so we headed back north 10 miles to one of the WalMart / gas station / fast food / hotel oasis' and got a room. The heat was still oppressive as the sun went down. Tomorrow we dip back down into Alabama, Georgia and then back into the mountains to try and escape the heat.