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Part 1 of 4263 Miles

Part 1 of 4263 Miles

I have been sitting in the motel room at the Madison Inn in Madison, PA for almost two days now and it is still raining hard. I really don't mind riding in the rain but this is just ridiculous. These rain storms have been with me since I started out on the trip several days ago. Just not fun. So I decided to stop here for a while. I have a small umbrella that I picked up a few days ago so that I can get out of the motel room for a bit. The thing is that in Madison Pennsylvania there is just not a whole lot going on. The only thing here is the Madison University and it has closed down for the summer and it seems, so has the rest of the town right along with it. The only stores open are the convenience store at the gas station across the street, a café/coffee shop on Main street and a pretty nice restaurant up on the hill a few blocks away. I made another visit to the coffee shop and had another Latte while updating my travel journal, then walked over to the convenience store to pick up my dinner; a couple of slices of pizza and a Dr pepper and took that back to my room where I turned the TV on to the Weather Channel and got a report of rain ending late tonight and sunshine on the way. It sure would be nice. I seem to have had my share of wet weather on the trip so far.

I left Jacksonville, Florida on May 30th and had a pretty good ride up the interstate to Savannah, Georgia where I met up with my old high school buddy, Pete, who was riding his big Harley Electra Glide. We had a good meal at a Hooters restraunt, just across from the Harley Dealer that we met at. After lunch, we rode Route 321 up through central South Carolina up to his house in Columbia. Pete and his wife Geri had me stay at their house for the night even though they were in the middle of some major home renovations. Up pretty early the next morning, I had breakfast with them at the local IHOP and then I was back on the road, riding north on I-77. I enjoy this ride because it heads into the Smoky Mountains of Virginia. Shortly after crossing into North Carolina you can see the mountains off in the distance and soon enough you are riding up into them. Crossing into Virginia, I took an exit from the interstate near Fancy Gap and was soon riding north on the Blue Ridge Parkway; most likely one of the best motorcycle riding roads in the east. After about a 100 miles on the Blue Ridge I got off at Meadows of Dan where I had planned on a stop for the night at the Willville Motorcycle Campground but as there was still plenty of light left, I continued on to Lexington, Va, stopping near there at the Lexington KOA campground….in the rain, which would follow me for the next several days.

Rather than set my tent up in the rain, I opted to get one of their cabins for the night. I met some other riders in the next cabin. They had just been to the Rolling Thunder Rally in Washington, DC and were headed back home to Kansas. We all rode down the road to the nearby Pink Cadillac Café. Supposedly made famous when Elvis Presley visited many years ago. There are all kinds of Elvis memorabilia inside including an old Harley Flathead which may have belonged to him. The food was just good and I had a fine old time with my new friends talking about motorcycles, long distance riding and the rally they had just been to. We got back to the KOA in the dark and I went straight to bed. When I got up the next morning my neighbors had already left.

The next day found me riding north, on the Skyline Drive, The weather had cleared some and I had a nice ride for most of the way. The entrance to the Skyline Drive starts at the north end of the Blue Ridge Parkway and both of them run along the crest of the Smoky Mountains. They both have great views but the Skyline Drive has more turnouts so you can stop and take a look or a picture more often. These mountain roads were also a great way for this Florida, flat land, rider to get used to riding in the hills again. At the end of the Skyline Drive and just north of Front Royal I stopped at a small campground and set up the tent for the first time on the trip. I was the only camper in the small campground; I guess the rain was keeping people away. Everything went up smoothly and I made a meal out of some fruit that I have purchased in Front Royal and was in my sleeping bag as the sun set.

On June 2nd I took my time packing up as I only had an 80 mile ride into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I made a cup of Hot chocolate and sat at the picnic table, updating my travel journal for a bit, enjoying the nice sunny morning. With the bike all packed, I was on Route 340 north to Harpers Ferry. I had wanted to visit here for quite some time. It is a small town at the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. There is a lot of civil war history here It is best known for John Brown's raid on the armory in 1959 and its role in the American Civil war. I was also meeting with Grace, a girl I had dated some 40 years ago and only seen one time since. She was going to drive up from her home near Washington, DC. After arriving at Harpers Ferry and Checking into a motel, I unpacked my gear and rode down to the small downtown/historic area of Harpers Ferry. There is very limited parking in Harpers Ferry and finding a place to park on a weekend is next to impossible. So I rode up to off site parking area and took a shuttle back into town. I walked around and tried to absorb as much of the history of the town as I could in the few hours that I had, it is a very interesting place and most definitely worth a visit. I finally took the shuttle back up to the parking area. Picking up the bike, I rode it back to the motel just as Grace arrived. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together. Other that a few hours some 20 or so years ago, I had not seen her in about 40 years. We had a lot of catching up to do. You would think that after not seeing someone for so long you would almost treat each other as strangers. However we found it very easy, even comfortable to talk to each other. We had a good time sharing old memories and catching up on the past. The older that I get, those old memories seem so much dearer.

The next morning, I was pleased to see the sun shining. I knew that it would be a long day on the bike as I needed to get up around Scranton, Pennsylvania before the end of the day. I rode north on Route 340 through West Virgina in to Maryland, where it becomes Route 15, crossing into Pennsylvania and rode that all the way into Gettysburg where I was going to stop for a late breakfast/early lunch. Riding into Gettysburg, I saw some monuments off in the distance and a sign to the Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield so decided to go and check it out. What an interesting place! I ended up spending the next few hours there. The Battle of Gettysburg took place from July 1st to the 3rd in 1863 and was the largest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It is regarded as the turning point in the war with the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg on July 4th. There are all sorts of monuments all over the battlefield and I happened to meet up with a gentleman who was there with his three sons who seemed more interested in climbing on the monuments and rusty cannons than learning any civil war history which he obviously knew well. He was telling us what happened, which direction the Confederate and Union soldiers came from and the outcome of various battles. It was all very interesting and a visit I will not soon forget.

Back on the bike, I finally did find a place to eat before leaving Gettysburg and heading north into Pennsylvania. At Harrisburg, I got back onto the interstate and just before Scranton, onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike so that I could bypass the city. Paying my toll at the end of the turnpike and getting back onto I-81 north of Scranton, the skies turned black with storm clouds in front of me. It became obvious that I was in for some serious rain and that there was nothing to do but put my rain gear on and head into it. I spent the next hour or so, riding into rain so heavy that I could only navigate down the highway by watching the tail lights of the car in front of me. It just never seemed to let up. I finally saw an exit with a sign for a Howard Johnson Motel and managed to pull off there where I got a room for the night.

The next Day, June 4th, I was greeted by still more rain but it was just a drizzle compared to what I had been riding through, No Problem! So I packed up. Got into my rain gear again and rode on through Binghamton, NY where I got off of the Interstate and onto Route 12 which I would take all of the way to Utica, NY and my brother’s house. Route 12 is a nice 2 lane road out of Binghamton. At least it was until I reached the sign which said “construction zone, pavement ends” they should have added to that “mud begins” It was a real chore riding through the muddy road for the next couple of miles. I could only imagine the dreadful mess it would have been had the bike gone down in the mud and rain. I just kept thinking, “If the bike goes over here, I will never be able to get it back up”. But I did make it through and all was well. Soon after getting back on the pavement, I stopped for a cup of hot coffee and felt ever so much better.

The GPS led me directly to Paul's front door in Utica. However, he was still at work. As he lived near his work, I rode on over and he showed me around his office and I met some of the folks that he works with. Back at his apartment, I unpacked and got settled in at his place as I did not have to be at Lake George or the Americade Bike Rally for a couple of days. When he got home, we went out and had a good meal at the Outback Steakhouse. The next day, Paul was off to work early so I did some chores, cleaned up the bike and washed some clothes. It was still raining off and on but seemed to be getting somewhat better; hopefully it would be nice for the bike rally. When Paul got home from work we went out and I picked up a few things then we went over to a park along the Erie Canal. Paul says that our Grandparents used to bring our dad and uncle to this same park when they were just kids..WOW!

Next morning on June 6th I left Utica and headed into the Adirondack Mountains on Route 8, riding in a light rain which continued almost all of the way to Lake George. I rode in to the Warrensburg north of Lake George and the Great Escape Campground along the Schroon River. After getting the tent set up I rode the 6 miles into Lake George and registered for the Americade Rally at the Holiday Inn. After getting legal, I went across the street to the Tour Expo to check out some of the vendors then took a ride along Canada Street which is the main drag through the center of Lake George I parked along with several hundred other motorcycles and walked along the street for a bit, stopping at a Ben & Jerry’s for an ice cream before heading back to the campground. On the way back I stopped at a lodge for dinner, eating out on the deck. It was a nice easy spot to sit and I could have stayed there longer but I headed back to the campground stopping at the camp store to mail off a few postcards.

The first night camping in New York was pretty good; the air mattress held up well and was a big improvement of the Thermarest pad. The temperature dipped into the low 40's but the sleeping bag kept me pretty warm. I awoke to a very foggy morning, hardly able to see across the small lake outside my tent. The fog cleared up around 9am and with blue skies for a change, I enjoyed the rest of the day at the bike rally. I took a demo ride on a brand new Honda Goldwing; it is a large touring bike with everything you could imagine on it. Very smooth ride and would be great for the long ride, especially with two people, but seems to be just too much bike for one person. Over at Tour Expo, I purchased a new pair of Motorcycle Boots from Tourmaster as the ones I had been wearing for the past couple of years were getting pretty ratty. In the evening I took a dinner cruise out on Lake George. This particular cruise was sponsored by Yamaha Motorcycles and they raffled off a bunch of neat stuff during the boat ride. I won a hat.....which I gave to my brother later. I sat with some guys from Maine and we had a good time. A light dinner was served aboard. There was some live music. It was a lot of fun. With the sun setting over the Adirondack Mountains, we arrived back to Lake George just as it was getting dark.

On Friday, June 8thm, I took a ride up along 9N along Lake George. At the north end of the lake is Fort Ticonderoga and the ferry that you can ride over into Vermont. It was closed last year, when I was here, but has since reopened. I rode over into Vermont with a few other people and we rode together for a while through the Vermont hills and pastures. It was nice to be riding with a group for a while. We had no set destination, just following the back roads through the pretty Vermont country side. We rode up quite a steep hill and, for some reason, the pavement ended at the very top. Rather than turn around we decided to keep going down the gravel road. It was a pretty tense ride: a steep downhill with hairpin turns on loose gravel. It was not a lot of fun on our big touring bikes. Towards the bottom of the hill a rider on a Goldwing in front of me took too much front brake on a hairpin turn and went down. He was not hurt and other than some cosmetic scratches to the fairing, the bike was OK. When we got back on the pavement at the bottom of the hill, I decided to go off on my own. Heading south on 23A I stopped at the village of Benson for a drink and found a small figurine for sale in a small general store that I thought my wife might like. It began raining again as I rode back into the town of Lake George.

Saturday morning I was up early, hoping that there would be sunshine as I needed to pack up camp and get on my way. I did not want to pack up a wet tent but that was not to be. It rained again, most of the night and as on previous mornings; I woke to fog around the camp. So I rode down to Warrensburg and had a leisurely breakfast. By the time I got back to camp the fog had burned off and the sun was shining but everything was still wet. I packed up anyway, wiping things down as best I could. At least the sun was out and I could only hope that it would stay that way for a while as it has been a pretty wet trip so far. I had a nice ride up Interstate 87. Perhaps the most beautiful of interstate highways I have ridden on. It runs north through the Adirondack Mountains, the traffic is fairly light and the scenery is spectacular. After about 80 miles on the Interstate I took an exit towards lake Placid and on Route 73 rode even deeper into the mountains. At Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games, there was still a lot of Olympic stuff going on. The Day that I passed through, there were some sort of Olympic trials being held for the upcoming 2012 Games in London and the place was crowded. Not a single parking spot to be had so I rode on through the town and on to Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake before heading south on Highway 30 to State Road 28. Before leaving leave the park, tired from all of the mountain riding, I stopped in the town of Old Forge and spent the night at a small motel there. Waking to a sunny morning, I was on the road, soon out of the Adirondack National Park and back towards Utica where I got onto the New York Thruway and rode a quick 60 miles to Syracuse and my brother's house.

Make sure you read Part 2

This article is placed on site by kind permission of, Phil Hughes, Jacksonville, FL June 2012

Catch up with Phil on his site: http://motorcyclejourney.weebly.com/