West Virginia Birthday Ride, June 23rd-27th 2008

I usually start to get the long-ride itch about when the weather warms up.. which is also about when my birthday is. So.. I had such a great time riding through West Virginia on the way to the RA Rally in 2007, I decided to take a birthday ride, and spend a short week in WV just enjoying their roads.  I was accompanied on the ride by Dennis Swanson for a very short time, and Jim Cavallo for most of the week, and John Ryan on Thursday afternoon.

West Virginia has been described as being like a rough ocean - wave after wave of mountains, separated by small valleys. None of the mountains is particularly high, but due to economic conditions, West Virginia hasn't found the need to flatten the roads that go up and over the mountains into uniform bland roads.. instead, the usual East-West road in West Virginia is a series of switchbacks, climbing up over the top of the mountain, and then descending on the other side.  the north-south roads run the length of the valleys between the mountains, usually following the stream that meanders down the center of the valley. These roads have a combination of great sweeping turns and some sharp switchback turns where the valley and river takes a turn.  West Virginia has a motto - seen on all the signs "Wild and Wonderful" - it's a good description.

My goal for the ride was to try to find a straight road in West Virginia.

DAY 1 - MONDAY, Spring Lake NJ to Stephen's City VA - 280 miles

Our first day's ride was simply to get out of NJ - and close to the border of WV. The track through NJ was slab, cross the state and head south until you're in Delaware. In Delaware, we headed through Newark DE, and then on backroads to Stephen's City Virginia. It's a 4-state day, since there is a very tiny section of West Virginia we passed through at Harper's Ferry.. We visited NJ, Delaware, MD, Virginia, WV, Virginia. It's a nice ride once out of NJ - lots of it is the same as my annual ride to the Square Route Rally in Thurmont, MD.

Entering West Virginia - for less than a mile - at Harper's Ferry

Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Virginia again - all in about 1 mile

Jim Cavello hamming it up

The road departments finally fixed the bridges at Harper's Ferry. I used to hate going through this area since the roads were in such bad repair. At this point - Jim and I were riding without Dennis, he'd disappeared after lunch in Westminister MD.

We ended up staying the night at the Comfort Inn in Stephen's City, VA, and dining at Roma's right around the corner. I've stayed at this motel a number of times - good food at Roma's and a reasonable priced motel room is hard to beat. They also have a nice pool that Jim and I made use of. We never saw Dennis again - just a cryptic phone call from him as we arrived at the motel "I'm going home"..  I think he made it from the I-81 interchange at Stephen's City.

Two brothers on a trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway also checked in for the night and joined us for dinner - one riding an MV Brutalle, the other an FJR. Good company and interesting to talk to.  For some reason I think they thought of us as old guys (they were about 20 years younger than us..)

Despite predictions of 60% chance of severe thunderstorms for Monday - we only passed through a few brief showers - not enough to even bother zipping up the zippers on my Aerostitch. Apparently nearby - the weather had been severe, with Washington DC getting hammered by thunderstorms, and just south of us in Virginia - thunderstorms with hail. We lucked in and had a great ride in almost dry conditions. There was a passing storm during the night - which cleared out the muggy conditions of Monday.

DAY 2 - TUESDAY, Stephen's City VA to Snowshoe, WV

Next morning - I awoke unusually early - and we were on the road into WV by about 8AM.  Tuesday was clear, cool and dry. Perfect riding weather. Our first stop was Seneca Rocks, WV:

Rt 55 in West Virginia is almost all "Interstate" for this section of the ride - but Interstate with a twist, it winds through the mountains, with great scenery, and almost no traffic. If you have to travel by Interstate - this is the right way to do it.  Apparently Robert C. Byrd was a master at pork-barrel, so West Virginia has some beautiful highways that no one travels on. Not a bad thing. We passed the home of Senator Byrd later in the day..

Seneca Rocks - at the intersection of WV Rt 55, 33 and 28

We stopped at the general store at Seneca Rocks for a few minutes. I've passed through this intersection several times, going in different directions in the past, and had never stopped.

I also had never really noticed the rocks.

They are rather obvious once you notice them.

General Store - Seneca Rocks - they had pretty much whatever you needed

We then headed south on WV Rt 28 - a great road going down the valley - sweepers, no traffic, great pavement. It is highly recommended.

Rt 28 from Seneca Rocks to the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory

After a quick stop at Boyer Station (Motel and Restaurant - semi-famous as the site of motorcycle gatherings), we continued to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank WV. http://www.gb.nrao.edu/ - there is a great 1 hour free tour of the facility that is worth the time to stop. We did - and enjoyed it.

Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (photo US Gov.) - the worlds largest moving object on land. The dish is 100m x 110m

Green Bank to Snowshoe WV by way of Rt 28, 39, 219 and 66.

Lunch stop at a real greasy-spoon in Marlinton WV

Jim and some home-made pie he said was excellent

We arrive at our destination for the night - the Inn at Snowshoe

The Inn at Snowshoe isn't anything great. It looks like a well used motel... but it has one thing going for it. An excellent and not expensive restaurant. The restaurant isn't open every day - so worth checking if you're thinking of staying there. If the restaurant isn't open - I'd suggest the Rt 66 Cafe directly across the street. As hard as it is to believe - the Inn has no WiFi, no network connectivity at all. Luckily the Rt 66 Cafe does - and it is wide open. I ended up (again - did this last year) - standing in front of the entrance of the Inn with my laptop, plugged into a light pole, using the Rt66 Cafe WiFi.  Someone at Snowshoe should really think about moving them into the 21st century.

DAY 3 - WEDNESDAY - Showshoe Inn to Canaan Valley Resort

The ride from Snowshoe to Canaan Valley was mostly on WV Rt 219, with a side order of extreme twisties on Rt 72.. a road the locals call "The Snake" - (in my opinion, the Snake is better than the Dragon in North Carolina/Tennessee. It has at least as many turns as the Dragon, but the majority are more extreme and combine with large elevation changes (ie - 270-300 degree uphill switchbacks). Most of it is single lane, some of it gravel covered, all of it a challenge. Great road - highly recommended.)  More on "The Snake" below..

Rt 219, Snowshoe to Parsons WV

Town Hall - Parsons WV

Parsons Depot

We had lunch at a small place next to the depot, right off the Sheetz gas station. After lunch (good, but too filling) we decided a short walk would help our digestion, and next door was the Parsons Depot - home to the town museum, and gift shop. On the side of the building was a sign that gave me pause after reading it. It looked like a real official printed sign. It said "No Trespassing after 4:30PM" - I'm still puzzling over the real meaning of it.

RT 72: Just outside of Parsons was a road that on the tourist site map I was using looked like a real road. There was no warning on the map that the road might be other than a real road - so I included it in the route to Canaan Valley State Park. It's WV Rt 72 - AKA "The Snake". I'll let the more accurate maps from Google speak for themselves - it is no ordinary road:

At the beginning of the road is a sign: "WARNING! Extreme turns and elevation changes next 15 miles. NO THROUGH TRUCKS!"
 

Just for fun - a closeup:

Rt 72 West Virginia - "The Snake" - it is that good.

The Snake is worth going out of your way for. You won't break any high-speed records on it - it was mostly a 1st-2nd gear road for me. The torque of the Roadster was great on it - I could turn into a sharp uphill switchback and just ease on the throttle, the bike just took off, no bogging down, no feeling it was about to stall. I found it a lot of fun, although it got a bit tight when there was oncoming traffic (especially when it was a truck that apparently ignored the signs.)  The road is reasonable - you don't need a GS to do it (Jim was on a K1200LT..)  There is gravel - a lot of gravel on the road, scattered in corners and in straight sections. I tried to find a spot to stop to take a few photos, but the road never had a spot where I could stop safely. On one side (our side) was a drop off the edge of the pavement, with a guard rail at about knee-level, on the other side - a stone cliff wall.

After surviving The Snake - it was a short ride on WV Rt 32 to the main entrance of Canaan Valley Resort (and state park.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Valley_Resort_State_Park

http://www.canaanresort.com/summer/

I had previously stayed at the resort in 2004, when the BMW-RA http://www.bmwra.org held their annual rally there. It has wonderful facilities for a rally, or just for an overnight stop riding through WV. There is a large lodge building, with an excellent restaurant, a snack-bar, a booze-bar, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, golf-course and lots more. The lodge building is surrounded by several motel-style lodging units - with reasonably priced rooms. There are also cabins for rent - which would sleep 4-8 people and include a kitchen.

The RA Rally was somewhat of a washout due to the arrival of hurricane Ivan - which swept up though the WV valleys and dampened the attendance at the rally. That was sort of a shame since the site was great - and the weather never really was all that bad - and coming and going days actually had good weather.

Our good-weather luck held out again - despite threatening weather reports - we only had rain when we were asleep, the rest of the time, sunny and warm was the rule.

Canaan Valley Resort

At Canaan Valley we accidentally stumbled into the Motorcycle Touring Association rally, http://www.mtariders.com/gathering/index.shtml. Nice bunch of people, we ended up getting their discounted room rate, and they were a fun group to socialize and chat with. MTA is a very couple oriented group, who have an annual "Gathering" - we just happened to drop in on theirs. I wasn't asked once if I was hot in my AeroStitch.

After checking in at Canaan Valley - Jim and I took separate rides. Jim wanted to revisit Seneca Rocks to see if he could get a photo with sunlight hitting the rocks - he reported success. I visited Davis WV - a small town I'd been to before during the RA Rally. Davis has a great looking bank/city-hall/post-office, and a neat junk store.  They also had plans for a riverfront park behind the commercial strip, but I saw no evidence that anything was happening with that. One thing I did see was WV-DOT spreading gravel in the road. Really.  They were preparing the road edges for what I believe was a repaving project (by NJ standards the roads were in great condition..) and using a grader to even up the edges.. in the process pushing gravel into the road.

Davis West Virginia

I checked out Grampa's Attic - the junk/antique store - looking for hammered aluminum ware to add to my wife's collection, but all the items they had were a bit large to carry home on the bike. Walked up and down the main street (5 minutes) then headed back to Canaan Valley - where a nap was in order to prepare for dinner. Jim returned from his ride - we had dinner at the restaurant in the main lodge - and it was excellent.

Wednesday night - we were treated to a light show by the members of the MTA. It was a bit hard to get any good photos since the bikes only had the lights on for very short periods of time (they ran the battery down - even with the engine running) and they were moving while the lights were on.

DAY 4 - THURSDAY, Canaan Valley and exploring the area

Jim had to get back to NJ on Thursday, so he was on the road early in the morning. I had managed to convince John Ryan to join me Thursday night, since his birthday is the same day as mine (June 24th).. but he wasn't due to arrive until later in the afternoon. So... I had the morning free to take a ride and do some exploring of the area. I decided to see what Rt 219 was like - going north from Davis WV up into Maryland's western panhandle.

Windmills on the ridge above Thomas WV

Canaan Valley WV to Oakland MD (and back)

Rt 32 in West Virginia leads you from Canaan Valley into Davis, where you can pick up Rt 219. Rt 291 leads through the town of Thomas WV, which has a main street with lanes separated 40' horizontally. It eventually leads you past a large windmill array, through a corner of Monongahela State Forest - and into Maryland. The change between WV and MD is somewhat startling. Where West Virginia has small towns barely holding onto the sides of the mountains they're built on, MD has rolling countryside and prosperous looking towns.

Upper Main St - Thomas WV

Upper Main St. - Thomas WV

Thomas WV

Windmills just outside Thomas WV

Rt 219 - Maryland

Oakland MD - Old Train Station - and Museum - this isn't WV!

Back in WV, Lower Main St - Thomas - on the way back to Canaan Valley

Lower Main St - Thomas WV - Hypno Coffee

I stopped for coffee in Thomas WV at the Hypno Coffee shop.  Good coffee, and free WiFi if you need it. Thomas is an unusual town.. the two lanes of their main street are separated horizontally by about 40-45 feet. The 3rd floor of the rear of the buildings line up with the upper main street, the ground floor on the front with lower main street.  Thomas is quainting up the lower main street - besides the coffee shop, there are several antique shops, and WV craft shops. Worth a walk around and a cup'a'java.

John Ryan arrived at Canaan Valley around 2:30PM - just in time for a nap, then some late lunch/early dinner at a nearby pizza/spaghetti joint. John then decided he had to see why I was excited by Rt 72 - so around dusk, he left to run it both directions. He came back impressed - saying it was "some road.."  Good to find a road that John liked - he's seen so many lately (Prudhoe Bay to Key West for instance..)

DAY 5 - FRIDAY, Canaan Valley to Home (410 miles)

John had promised relatives to help them move - in Tinton Falls NJ - at Noon on Friday, so he was up early at about 5AM. John is not the quietest person in the morning, so about when he was pulling out - I got up - around 6AM. I was on the road by 7:15AM for a 7.5 hour projected ride home. The ride ended up taking about 8 hours - counting gas stops/food/pee stops. It was nice on 219 getting up to I-68. I-68 was nice for an interstate - little traffic, good pavement, great views. It then turned into Rt 70 - and things weren't quite as good. I then had to take I-81 up to near Harrisburg PA to pick up the PA Turnpike.

I noticed as I got closer to NJ - the road got worse, the traffic got heavier and the closer I got to NJ - the dumber the drivers were. I'd gotten used to the uncrowded roads of West Virginia and it took some culture adjustment to get back into the NJ semi-urban-warrior riding style.

It was a great week, and I had great company in Jim Cavallo and John Ryan. I'm sure Dennis Swanson would have been great company also if he hadn't disappeared the first day. I didn't find a straight road in WV this time - so I guess I'll just have to continue looking. I'm thinking of doing some more of the western part of the state next year. Perhaps there is a straight road there. I just heard today that the 2009 BMW-MOA Rally will be in Gary Tennessee - which means I have to travel through WV again to get there. Damn - it's a dirty hard job, but someone has gotta do it.

West Virginia to Home

End of the trip.. (I think the Max Speed is a tiny bit off..)