Weather

Over the past several days I have been monitoring the weather on the proposed route.   At the first of the week, the chance of rain on Sunday and Monday in West Virginia was about 50% or more.

Today, the forecast in the same area is for sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60's for a high.

What all this means is you don't know but I am smiling more now than I was at the first of the week when the forecast for more "gloomy".

One new thing I am going to do is to post the days route in a separate "blog" post.  So, here is what Sunday's route looks like.

Since this is only a six day trip, we will not be taking our normal "get out of town fast' route on the interstate.  In fact, there is little interstate usage on this trip.  

So if you are trying to avoid interstates you also don't want to use the "normal" secondary routes if you can avoid them.   That means routes like US 176 or US 321 are to be avoided.   So for this part of the trip I thought it would be cool to see how far one could go on SC 200.  Pretty far and it runs it the right direction and guess what?   There is an NC 200 that goes north and south also.  

Ok.. day one is about 350 miles.  The longest day.   We will start off from Waffle House and head North (sort of).  

Things along the way on Day one.   Rural North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, and Jefferson National Forest.

The end point is Princeton, WV.  Population 6,400 and elevation of 2.438 Ft above sea level.  

Here is an interesting factoid which I have not personally verified but it was stated that there is not now a city in West Virginia with a population over 50,000.  

Preperations

Just the usual preparations, with some minor exceptions.  After last year's trip out west, I purchased a portable air compressor.   It is small and works well.  I have only verified it will add air to the tires but have not used it to inflate a flat tire.

I carry a few tools,  multi-purpose knife/tool, a multi-purpose screw driver and two allen wrenches.  One allen wrench is to allow the seat to be removed and the other is for the foot pegs incase that get moved somehow.  

I have a new helmet I got for Christmas.  Is a Shark Evoline like my old one (it was over 5 years old) and it is a little lighter.  However, it does seem to be a bit nosier than the old Shark.   The sunshade does appear to be better, optically (things appear sharp when viewing thru it, the old one was sort of "cloudy").  

Once the trip was laid out on the map, the next step was to figure out where to stop for the night.   

The first day is about 350 miles, the rest of the days are 250 to 280.  Thats what we have done in the past.  The only problem is that if you are traveling through rural areas, you may not be able to find accommodations that suit your needs.  So, if you cannot find a place on your route you might have to make some modifications.  

For instance, we are traveling near Monticello, KY and there is only one Hotel there.   Its well reviewed but its unusual to only have one hotel in an area.  

In another case, I modified the route to take us along the Ohio River and in into Ohio for one night.  We also travel thru a small part of Maryland.  Which brings me to the state count.  SC, NC, VA, WV, MD, OH, KY, TN, GA.   So its nine states. 

As in previous trips, I used TripAdvisor to help select accommodations, that and past experience.  On last year's trip out west, we stayed at three or four non-chain motels.   One we had used before.  The others were all based on TripAdvisor.  We were not disappointed.  We had the same results when we made the Nova Scotia trip.   

This time I did get a little carried away and tried to figure out where we might have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the road.  In general, we look for non-chain places to eat.  There are three exceptions.  These are Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, and Texas Roadhouse.   If I cannot find a non-chain place that seems to fit our needs, and one of these three is in the area, its where we go.  

The other thing I like is BBQ and Ruebens so,   I looked for places that had BBQ on the way and Ruebens on the menu.  Most of your Pubs have Ruebens .   And we have found BBQ places all over the place.  I remember making a stop at a gas station somewhere in Pennsylvania that had a little lunch area and they had good BBQ.  One time on our first trip to Canada, we stopped at a BBQ place in the middle of rural New York and they had good BBQ (actually we ate all of the pulled pork they had ).  

I have used TripAdvisor in the past to find restaurants and places to eat when we were in the motel and used the GPS's information to find lunch spots (since the phone is connected to the GPS, I can call and ask about their menus while we travel).  I was talking about this with my daughter on a recent trip and she said she used TripAdvisor to lodging and Yelp for places to eat.  Since she works in the hotel industry, I figured I would take her advice and I consulted Yelp for eating places along the way.  I will let you know how it all works out. 

The Bike

As in last years trip we are taking my 2015 Goldwing.  It now has 17,000 miles in it and new oil and filter.  I have also done some other stuff but if you have not followed previous trips here is what the "Silver Lady" looks like today (well if I had taken the pictures today).

Also I put the OEM tire back on the bike since it only had 4,000 miles in it and the old one had about 12,000.  Front tire is original but will have to be replaced soon.

 New lights PIAA 910 and Fog lights (the PIAAs are super lights.  They really light up the road)

 Garmin Zumo GPS, and Adaptive Radar Detector wired into Autocom Pro and Honda CB.  You might ask why the Radar Detector.  Its not that I speed or go over the speed limit I just like to know when I am being "painted".

 Powerlet socket for passenger heated gear (we have ridden in the 30's but .....

 Rider's Powerlet socket for heated gear

The Zumo's Sirius/XM Antenna.   It works well and the weather and traffic are pretty cool features.

The 2015 comes standard with heated seats and heated grips.  And it has a foot warmer, which sort of works.

Where to Go

Planning this years road trip was a little hard.  If you have followed the other blogs you will note we have covered a good bit if territory in the past three or four years.  And, some of our other trips were in the two week range.  This year we decided we would only do five days.   And we wanted to do it in  late spring.

So we picked the week before Memorial Day, arriving back home before the long weekend started.

But the "where to go" part was the dilemma.  The choices  were for a five/six day trip of around 1,500 miles were narrowed down to two.  A northern route or a southern route.  Both trips were laid out using information from http://www.motorcycleroads.com.  This web site is good for suggestions of what roads might be fun to travel but it has to be used with some "oversight".

Knowledge of the general areas being explored and the fact that what you think is a fun road may not be a fun road for someone else.

A route that takes us up through West Virginia was agreed to.  You have to remember that these trips are about riding and seeing what you can along the way.  We have been through rural West Virginia several times and its a fun ride.  

Next question, what to do after West Virginia?  We elected to go through Kentucky and Tennessee and then North Carolina on the way back home.

So here is what the trip looks like.