Tues Sep 9 - Winchester VA to Mansfield PA

This is what happens when you wait a couple days to write this stuff. Bad enough I have to ask Dave where we stayed last night, say nothing of 2 nights ago.
Today was a long haul up route 522. This goes due north through that part of the east where glaciers scored long valleys and ridges. The roads just gotta go up the valley until they can't stand it anymore and then they hop over the top of one of the ridges. So we start in Virginia and then into West "by God" Virginia (for at least the 4th time!) and then across Maryland. Maryland is so skinny here, you could hold your breath at the southern border and not have to breath again until you hit the norther border. Seriously, it's about 3 miles. And like I said, West Virginia must be star shaped because it just keep sucking us back in.
So the Pennsylvania where the Amish hide out. They seem to pick areas big enough and flat enough and fertile enough to create stand alone communities. This after all is one of the goals, to create a community. I can't image a lone Amish family living without like-minded neighbors. You know you are not in touristy areas when the Amish scramble in the buggy to wave at motorcycles.
Something I think we have to be careful of is trusting the state map, or any map for that matter, when they call a route "scenic". Sometimes it is, but many times these get loaded with other tourists taking the scenic route and hence the route filling with shops to sell stuff to the tourists, then billboards, then.. So your best bet is take the route that doesn't connect anything with anything, or set Daves GPS to "no highways", "shortest route", and "no gravel roads with grass growing in the middle". If only that last one existed.
End of the day, Dave punches up a hotel and it leads us to Mansfield PA. Damned if this isn't the same town with the same hotel we stayed in last spring, and Dave and his wife Irene stayed in last year on their cross country trip. Must be magnetic. Bad enough we have traveled every road in Vermont umty ump times, but now PA and WV (Ohio is next) are giving us repeats. Gotta get further west..
The Comfort Inn was full of gas drillers (because they have a lounge, we are sure) so we found another place across the valley. Chatted up 4 folks from Iowa (on 3 Harleys) who were heading home (west). They had gone to Delaware and Rhode Island to complete the lower 48 states. Those Iowa folks sure are friendly. They looked like normal retired folks in the restaurant the night before, but were downright bad-ass the next morning in their leathers and dew-rags. If only BMW made dew-rags. Here is my brother with and without a dew-rag. OK ladies, which one would you ride into the sunset with?