June 15, 2025
What a day….
After breakfast (home fries and scrambled eggs) I finished packing and loading the bike.
Dan and I texted a few times and agreed to get on the road around 10am. He came over and we headed about by 10:30 or so and his girlfriend grabbed a video of us pulling away.
The first leg of the trip is to Uniontown, PA, traveling on Hwy 51, where we stopped to top off our tanks. The weather is nice and feels like it will be a warm, and somewhat humid, day. Being a Sunday, the traffic is light and we scooted south and crossed into West Virginia. Almost right away the roads became curvy.
Since we were going top be within a short distance of Morgantown, WV, I wanted to stop there for a tourist site: a statue honoring Don Knotts who grew up there. Yes, Don Knotts, AKA, Barney Fife. While I haven’t watched TV in decades, I did watch the Andy Griffith Show back in the day and enjoyed Knott’s portrayer of the bumbling, and nervous, deputy.
The statue is in front of a theater on the Main Street and swe were able to park a few car length a way to get some photos.
From there, we headed to Dan’s choice: Seneca rocks. This is a large outcropping of rock in what it otherwise tree covered hill country. The ride there was great, all 2-lane roads with lots of twists and turns and up and down hills. Along the way, in Belington, we stopped at a Subway for lunch.
There was a railroad graveyard next door.
Seneca Rocks wasn’t far after that. We stopped there for some photos.
I don’t exactly remember when the rain started because there was so much of it for the rest of the day, on and off, cycling from drizzle to shower to downpour. This is one reason there are not lots of road photos today. Between being on narrow roads with few places to pull off, getting the phone out to take photos in the rain is a huge hassle.
The next stop was Smoke Hole Road. We rode some distance, maybe 15-20 miles, on some back roads before we arrived at the turn off. This road is freshly covered with new blacktop and is narrow, a car width and a half, and nothing but twists and turns, many of them very tight, running through a heavily wooded terrain with great changes in elevation. There was rain, clouds, fog, and fun. Here’s photos from one stop.
Dan is good at shooting photos while riding. Here are some of me on that road.
And here are some videos.
All good things must come to an end and after 15-20 miles, we got back on a 2-lane road but it was fun itself. We were heading to our campground, Bluestone State Park, which the navigation app indicated was about 3 hours away. The route there was more West Virginia delights with a beautiful route with sweeping curve after sweeping curve.
The rain kept coming and going so in Franklin, WV we stopped for gas and get on on our rain gear. My jacket had taken on some water but I was mostly dry underneath it but getting the rain liner inside it would be like extra insurance. My Levi’s were a bit wet and rain pants over those would keep things from getting worse. I was wearing my lightweight gloves, which were soaked, but the temperature was still in the mid-70s so I didn’t feel a need to change them out.
In White Sulphur Spring we stopped because our Cardo devices were telling us that the batteries were running low. Not only does the device let us hear navigation directions in our helmets, we can talk back and forth with is really handy. The rider in front can warn the rider in back of road hazards.
After passing through Caldwell, we were about 10 miles out of town, still heading south when we saw flashing lights up ahead. It turned out that a large tree had fallen across the road and was completely blocking it. Some guy directed us down a side road, Deerfield, well-named, because as we passed a large field, a half dozen deer ran across the road in front of Dan. After a few miles on this little road we stopped to check the map. This was going nowhere so we turned around and headed back the way we had come. That app directed us down another side road which terminated at a locked gate. OK, turn around and head back to Caldwell.
By this time, we had chewed up a bunch of time and it was getting late and the only way to get to where we were going was to get on I-64 which we did. No sooner had we started rolling along that another storm blew through and this one was serious. We had to slow way down to even see where we were going. We rode that route for about 40-miles or so and then exited at the rode to Hinton, the town near where we would camp. We stopped for gas again and picked up beer to go with dinner.
It was now dark and we had 12 miles to go to get to the campground. The rain had mostly stopped and we found our campsite without a problem. The only issue is where to put our tents as every inch that isn’t paved is muddy mess. Tents were places on the asphalt next to our bikes.
After setting up we fired up our stoves and enjoyed a nice dinner by headlamp. I had Sweet Potato Chili Mac that was pretty good.
After dark, the woods were full of animal noises.
It was a 386 miles day.
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