A buddy and I spoke earlier in the week and decided that "If Sunday is good lets make a meandering run somewhere in the Finger Lakes, get something to eat and take a different path back."

My friend is, well.....eccentric at times. Not really organized, and can be scatter brained. But is a good guy to be around, and surprisingly smart and knowledgeable about many off-beat path's and subjects.

Two of his interests are ferreting out old abandoned Railway tracks, bridge abutments and the like, coupled with an interest in finding abandoned canals, along with old factories and inn's, etc., that lined them.

When you travel with him you find out that your 800# sled is NOT a good substitute for a Dual Sport.

And yesterday was no exception.

At one point we traveled about one mile down a seasonal road (Read: A rutted, muddy path to a dead end that was even more deeply rutted and sloppy, oh and it was on an incline. Turning around was a treat. The least amount of throttle caused the back end to wiggle in an instant.

I went down to inspect my baby this A.M. and I've got some serious mud to clean off. It looks like it's baked onto my recent Supertrapps.

But it was fun, once we parked, we beat through a buggy path to a ravine with a long abandoned train trestle abutment leading to an incline on the opposite side and you could not help but think of how badly our early settlers must have wanted this railway there. It could not have been an easy project, and the fact that it and the adjacent abandoned canal have been obviously long discarded shows that the operational period was relatively short.

Makes you wonder what their purpose was, maybe to open up what was then mostly frontier? Perhaps once done better methods of transport could then be cut into the country-side to and from different burgs? Lot's of now mostly forgotten history to be explored if you have an interest.

Pretty neat stuff.

All told on straight line path's we should have put roughly 100 miles total on our bikes, which was reasonable since we left at 3:00 PM. (Did I mention that my friend was unorganized? This was the soonest that we could manage to get away.)
Somehow we managed to turn that planned 100 mile trip into 160+ miles traveling a lot of meandering back-roads and doing our exploring, we had a great lunch-supper at a roadside place, and got home as darkness fell.

Not a bad end to week-end.

How about you? Any interesting runs to share?

 

Sounds like a proper run. I personally always plan out a route via Google Earth and write the road numbers down on a sheet of paper. The way to should never be the way back, and everything in between is the adventure.

Also when off the beaten path, I try to remember that Harleys were built for going anywhere. Yeah, sometimes, I opt to de-logic, but it is fun taking a big bike where ever you want.