Roadtrip Sept 12, 2009
- Saturday – September 12, 2009 –
We woke up Saturday at 7:00am. There was a little fog in the valley, but it burned off pretty quickly. As usual I was ready to go in about 15 minutes. Robert and Richard doddled, but we still somehow managed to get out in time to meet Scott at 9:00am at Kathy’s Restaurant. The bacon omelet set me up for the day ahead. We finally made it to the parkway by 11:00am after a detour across the median at the 81 / 64 interchange. That was interesting.
Entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway
Scott took the lead at this point as he had some very nice side roads off the parkway for us to check out. The routes were well worth the time it took to detour off the parkway.
Scott takes the point
Catching up to some "Wild Hogs"
Loaded Down
Smooches looks a little frazzled
No photo tricks here. This is straight out of an old point and shoot. It was a nice day.
Scott doing his thing
At this point we had pulled pretty far ahead of Robert and Richard. Scott and I decided to pull over and let them catch up.
Here they come...
After regrouping we headed down the road to Peaks of Otter. We wanted to stop there and scope out the location as a possible spot to hold next year’s STN national meet. The lodge sits right on the lake in a picturesque setting. The riding in the area is also outstanding. Of course most of the people on STN would rather stay at a flea bag motel, but to each their own.
Lake
The Peak
Get that shot
Look close and you can see someone up there.
Click here for a view from the top.
At this point we were pretty hungry. We headed down into Bedford, VA to find some food. We rode around for about 45 minutes looking for something. Three GPS’s between us and none of the places mentioned existed anymore. We ended up at an Original Pizza Inn just outside of town. The air conditioning was much appreciated. After we finished lunch Richard wanted to visit the D-Day memorial that is in Bedford. We got there and it was closing for the day so it was back to the parkway to head further south.
Scott, You may be on the wrong side of the road.
Scott was planning on Spending the night in Roanoke as he was going to be checking out the backroads in that area before heading home. I guess it was about 6:30pm when we broke off from him. And then there were three. We had about 50 miles to cover to get to the campground we were staying at so we needed to hit the road to get there before dark.
The evening sun was the worst.
The plan for the night was to stay at the Willside Motorcycle Campground. As would be a theme in this trip, we didn’t get there until dark. The place was pretty full but we managed to find a place to setup our tents. There was a large community fire going but we ended up just hanging out with our neighbor, Bob. Bob was a retired motorcycle cop from South Carolina and had plenty of great stories to share.
Chris only on day two but loving this! I can’t wait to read more tonight. And the pics are awsome! Maybe your next career should be as an author?
Chreeeees,
Was on Blue Ridge but lack memory of same. Maybe frazzled “Smootch” will explain some day. Anyway very descriptive such as telling me picture of lake was “Lake”.
Stumpy