Day 6. Today we travel 275 miles from Pineville, West Virginia to Arnoldburg, West Virginia. It's always a great day when you can spend the entire day riding in WV.. As you can see, we try to avoid big cities and interstates like the plague...even it if takes us the long way around.
As I mentioned earlier, we were holed up in a dingy motel above a Subway, so that's what we had for breakfast too. I wasn't too excited about it, but we didn't have many choices. It was this or the gas station across the street. Their breakfast sandwich was surprisingly good.
Time to hit the road..
we traveled through man country. weird name. we didn't stop to find out why.
One of the roads was going through some resurfacing. No one was around so I rode the left side most of the way. i think this went on like this for about 3-4 miles.
lots of these on the main roads from all the coal mining going on around here
Seriously, how can the weather be so awesome for so long during the first week of June!?!?? I don't know and I don't care. I'm just thankful.
The roads in this section were awesome. Houses were scattered about every so often, but the pavement was smooth and very grippy, very little traffic and no speed limit signs (just turn speed warnings). state speed limit is 55 so no worries.
yes, please keep the kids fenced in and out of the road.
we've never been on this road before. it just seemed to go on and on and on...
and on...and on... this stretch went like this for about 20-30 miles!
We finally take a break at a local 'have everything' store. it was a grocery store, deli, hardware, auto parts, lumber, and anything else you might need in a pinch kind of store. I asked to use the bathroom and was directed to the storage/employee-only section of the store. Nice friendly people. You don't get hospitality like this (usually) anymore...too bad.
later we hit up some tight side roads. it was a nice change as the temps started to climb to the mid 80s. yea, we were spoiled by the mid 70 temps.
Route 16 is a damn fine road.
It about about 7pm by now, and we could see some dark clouds moving in ahead of us. Luckily, we came upon this Y intersection in Arnoldburg, WV. We saw some cars and bikes parked in the center of the intersection and hoped this meant there was a restaurant nearby...and sure enough, there it was....the Y Restaurant.
And literally next door, the Y Motel. The waitress told us that if no one was at the office, to simply use one of the rooms with a key still on the door, which meant no one else was using it. Move the room number off the board and pay the lady later. This was a first for me. The owner later told us that she has never had anyone use the room and run off w/o paying. They recently had a couple dirt bikers from Canada come through here who were riding all dirt roads/trails from Canada and only getting off to get gas, food, essentials. Sounds cool. I've never done that kind of dirt biking trip, but I put it on my bucket list. We're need to keep this on our route for next time.
but first, we get some much needed food. the bbq pork sandwich was not the best in the world, but for just a couple bucks, it's worth a try. i'm usually not a salad-appetizer kind of guy.
the steak dinner was a whopping $12..
Tony basically brought a tankbag worth of clothing on this trip and he ran out of clean socks. After washing them in the sink, he hung them up to dry. I suggested he try microwaving the wet socks to steam the moisture out of them vs. drip dry (read: wet socks in the AM). pretty funny seeing hot steaming socks come out, but it worked!
After adjusting my chain yet again, it was time for some much needed rest. Life on the road is awesome.