We slept pretty good and had a quick breakfast then headed out!
Breakfast of Champions and instant coffee.
Nice 2 lane in middle PA.
Beautiful corn!
Lots of Amish heading to church.
Into Maryland...
Lots of fuel was consumed! We found this to be the easiest way to fill 2 bikes.
West Virginia....what can I say, AWESOME!
This is the truth!
Set up camp! Not a bad campground and we were only the 2nd tenter in this part of the campground.
Beers! We found that we we asked nicely and explained that we were on bikes thats stores would let us take some ice from the soda machine instead of having to pay for bag ice!
Wife's cooking! She dehydrated meals to save some cash and it worked out well.
Great riding day and one of my favorites of the trip.
Up early which was the case 90% of the time. 2nd day packing up we have it down to a science. We ate breakfast and headed out into an overcast day. One spot I wanted to hit today was the New River Gorge Bridge.
This was the campground we stayed at.
It was a bit of a walk to the bathroom but a nice little view!
We made it...
We rain gear up and take off toward Kentucky. We planned on hitting Mammouth Cave by the end of the day.
Love small town America!
Running from this! We were successful for the most part.
Chip stop and with temps in the 90's we were ready to shred this rain gear! Peeled it off chatted with a nice woman in the dealership about our trip and headed out as we had a few more hours to go before we hit our end of day destination. Looking at the time and weather scenario we figured a hotel would be best so I found a semi reasonably priced one on Hotels.com app and we headed there.
We arrive to what looks like an abandoned hotel 😱 but since I paid already I searched for a way in to check in. Woman at the desk wasn't in a uniform or anything but seemed to know what she was doing and took care of us. We were only a 10 min ride to Mammouth Cave and because of the time change we had a few hours before they closed so we headed there.
I asked for a safe place to park our bikes and the staff woman said to pull them up the handicap ramp and park them in front of the door. Done!
To be safe we stripped the bikes down.
Not our room but this was a theme throughout our walk around the hotel.
We get there and of course they are sold out for the day on tours so we buy tickets for the next day and head out to get something to eat.
I'd never seen this soda before but wow was it good!
Random roadside pic!
We should have stayed here!
Made our way back the Hotel Hell and settled in for the night. We decided after that we were not going to book a hotel sight unseen again.
After a shitty night of sleep we headed to the lobby for there 'free breakfast'. We could have choosen some delicious frozen food choices but opted to walk across the street to Craker Barrel. Full we packed up headed into park for our cave tour.
We were a bit early so we waited.
Met this Italian woman who was riding this across the nation. She rose from Washington state and was heading to Virginia. Amazing!
She was a bit 'Earthy' smelling up close but nice to walk behind!
Entrance to our cave tour!
After a few hours touring the caves we headed out to our next stop of the day the National Corvette Museum. We weren't far from it but the weather wasn't looking good. We were almost there when the sky's opened up. Against my better judgement I decided to pull over and rain gear up. I found an overpass and we pulled up as close as we could to the guardrail as we could then jumped over to put our gear on. I was geared up and watching the traffic as my wife finished up. I noticed headlights dancing through the thick rainfall and road spray and told my wife to hurry. She looked up as the headlights began to dart across the 3 lanes of the highway. When I could see that it was a SUV fishtailing all over the place obviously hydroplaning we were already walking backwards up the bridge embankment and Laura began yelling don't hit the bikes don't hit the bikes! Literally feet before taking out both bikes the elderly woman got control and pulled the side of the road a few hundred yards past us along with a TT unit that she obviously hit during her out of control spin. Not taking anymore chances we mounted up and escaped the roadside, merged with the heavy traffic and then exited the highway. That was the last time we will ever gear up along the highway.
We made it to the museum and checked it out. Amazing that the sink hole took out all those beautiful cars. They are still studying it and had a crew there when we visited.
We left there heading to our destination. Big Springs National Park in MO. Beautiful park. It seemed deserted as we ride on looking for the campground. The park always also and animal reserve so there were deer everywhere. We found the campground and there were a couple of wings. One wing had power and it was full. We rode to another wing and had it all to ourselves. We set up and walked to the river for a swim. The current was pretty strong so just stuck to the shallows. Refreshing end to a long day
In the saddle!
07-26-2015, 07:05 PM
Day 2
