Day 5...
This is as far south as we go this year. From Ashville, NC we start heading back north and eventually end at Pineville, WV. Another glorious 350 mile day coming up..
But first, we grab some breakfast.
Really, I don't eat pancakes this often...but hey, I'm on vacation!
And we head back to one of my favorite roads...the Blue Ridge Parkway.
So many thick clouds, it started to remind me more of the Smokies than BRP..
As you can see in the breakfast pic, the pavement is dry. It was cloudy today, and at the elevations of the BRP, we're basically riding in those clouds, and hence the 100% humidity turned the roads wet.
Yea, it got thick in some parts. And yes, that's a car in front of us. Kinda hard to pass when you can't see past the car right in front of us!
Still, it was a great view at one of the overlooks we took a break.
Damn...it's like a wall.
The other side of the overlook...we could literally see the clouds moving through.
We decide to give it another go and hope it clears up soon....but we find otherwise. We didn't come up here to do LESS than the speed limit...this was getting ridiculous.
And now, it was starting to rain. First rain of the trip, so we put on a rain jacket and cover our gear.
It's nice to be parked on *THIS* side of the LEO. Seems every year I end up finding myself having a [not so nice] chat with an LEO, but I'm happy to report this year the streak has been broken! It's about time. Here we met a nice couple heading back south (Alabama I think) from their trip up north. Nice Honda, although the newer one looks butt ugly IMO.
Soon, we decide to head off the BRP (sadly) in search of dry pavement. And sure enough, once we got off the Blue Ridge, it was dry.
random bumper sticker I saw at a gas station.
lots of nice smooth pavement.
cloudy but dry. good enough for me.
Truly, this is what MC trips does for me. My religion.
Hell yea, we love Rt 16 by Hungry Mother State Park so much that our route back home goes through it again.
Gorgeous. I could hang out here all day, going back and forth on this section of Rt 16...but we must continue north.
We finally make it back to War, WV looking for a hotel for the night. We hope to find a room at the War Hotel... little did we know, it turned out to be the worst piece of crap run down hell hole half way house wanna be building. Seriously, it was bad. I wish my camera battery didn't run out by this point bc I would've loved to take some shots of this place. Obviously, we decide to head up the road to find another place.
last picture of the day. the next hotel was something like 70 miles, as the crow flies, according to the GPS. we ended up riding another 130 something miles after we were already quite tired when we got to War, WV. Oh well, good thing my ipod hadn't run out of juice. We settle on a 2nd floor motel above a commercial building with a subway downstairs, which we had for dinner. It was about 10pm at this point. We inhaled our food basically, and then I proceeded to lube and adjust my chain again. By this point, I was getting pretty good/quick about it.
Through it all, another great day.
