Ride from NC/VA Border to Blue Ridge Campground

[brazos parker]

Well, w/ the weather radar looking like it does, I think the ride for this am has been called off. Hope In10city calls me along the way.

In10city? Are you there? Hello?

Well, disregard the above post. The weather cleared enough for me to make the rendevous point on time.

NOTE to HEIDI: In10city and Lady In10city now have braggin' rights for Shady Valley and 321. ..and both in the rain to boot!! :lol: :yahoo: :lol:

Hey, good deal Mike! So, you take 'em to the country store? How did they like 421?

Yes, we stopped at the country store. When we left Damascus, it started raining and rained pretty much the rest of the ride. We rode SV's east leg pretty slowly in the wet and, especially, when we caught up w/ a group of bikes and 2 trikes. I'll let In10city tell you if he liked SV and/or 321. I'm guessing here, but I bet they ran into some fog on the BRP as they headed south...mountains had lots of low hanging clouds.

 

[luvtoride]

Hopefully we will all have better weather during the EOM and can meet Travis at Shady on Friday morning, Sept. 8th.
Roger

Hopefully so Roger. Rain sucks on 421. The first 2 times I rode 421 the weather wasn't cooperating. I've rode it dry & definitely by far one of my favorite areas to ride.

I'll be headed down on Thursday, EOM eve. Will definitely be with everyone that's doing the valley.

I very much admire you guys who live close to the good areas. I've got to ride at least 200 miles to get to mountains.

I'm looking forward to meeting ya' & doing some serious carving.

Mr. Parker... so, you guys hit rain... bummer man! Well, I hope they got at least a little taste of the area, anyway & will be back in the future. The area is becoming pretty well known outside of the local area riders as a gem where riding is concerned... that's for sure.

Will see you guys come September, Heidi

 

[TheRepairMan]

Yeah, and on the clear days on 421 you have to watch out for the White Tail Deer and the Bicyclists.

 

[In10city]

Well I'll title that trip Bumpers, Brake Lights and Bad Weather. :angry2:

We had a great visit with you Mike and glad we got a chance to meet. Thanks for navigating our way through Shady Valley and on to HWY 321. I can see now that I'll have to re-visit those roads when it's clear and make it a weekend trip, great area and I look forward to seeing it again.

The rest of our trip continued to decline into misery, if not worse. We made it to the BRP only to hit a detour and get right back off, following local and tourist traffic 10 MPH BELOW the posted limits in rain and fog. After 30 minutes on backroads we got back on the parkway. The fog got so dense I was only following the center line at some points and even living in England for 3 years, I never experiance fog like that. We made it to Little Switzerland by 5PM for a break and to call our other friend from the ZZR forum who was meeting us at the Blue Ridge Motorcycle Campground that evening.

The rest of the ride was foggy, rainy, slow, and full of tourists until we got south of Asheville where the clouds finally parted and we got to pick up the pace a bit. We made camp by 7:45 just in time to order a good hot dinner then hit the road following Jack on his blue ZX-14 in seach of cold beer since the campground is located in a dry county. I didn't realize how much beer those hard bags will hold.

We headed back out Sunday morning at 9am and ended up back on the BRP for a short stretch before heading south east on my old familiar roads. After some nice high speed twisty stuff on Highway 28 and grinding off a few more milimeters on my pegs we got back home at 7PM.

915 miles over 2 days with only 330 of it on the interstate. The remaining 585 miles averaged 35MPH in rain... :dribble:

 

[slapnpop]

Have they still got the BRP detoured between Boone and Spruce Pine? That was supposed to be done forever ago!

That'll impact EOM rides.

 

[In10city]

Yes the detour is still there and would not have been too bad without the traffic, but if you go through there on a weekend it will have a suck factor of 10.

 

[luvtoride]

I didn't realize how much beer those hard bags will hold.

Oh yeah man, each side case will hold a minimum of a boxed 12 pack... & that's not actually stuffing them!

Glad to hear that you made it to your destination ok. Mike said that he suspected that you'd be riding in fog. He was commenting on how low the clouds were hanging.

I've experienced the dense fog on the BRP before. My buddy Jeff was way in front of me. He was making a left hand turn into a rest area/scenic overlook & a car coming the other way came terribly close to taking him out. He just couldn't see the car coming at him it was so thick out there.

 

[FJR Gary]

Yea, fog can get pretty bad on the BRP at times. Last May, I was riding with the Bandit group. We got on the Parkway at Tuggles Gap and were heading south to the Meadows of Dan. We ran into fog so thick you could barely see about 2 white lines ahead. Then we came up on a car that was stopped right in the middle of the road trying to make a U-turn. Its fortunate we were only going about 15-20 mph or we would have ran right into the car. Stupid cagers. We finally pulled off and waited about an hour or so for the fog to lift a little so we could continue. That was definitely the worst fog I've ever ridden in.

 

[luvtoride]

Hey, that's the same area where I hit fog!

 

[brazos parker]

Well I'll title that trip Bumpers, Brake Lights and Bad Weather. :angry2:
We had a great visit with you Mike and glad we got a chance to meet. Thanks for navigating our way through Shady Valley and on to HWY 321. I can see now that I'll have to re-visit those roads when it's clear and make it a weekend trip, great area and I look forward to seeing it again.

The rest of our trip continued to decline into misery, if not worse. We made it to the BRP only to hit a detour and get right back off, following local and tourist traffic 10 MPH BELOW the posted limits in rain and fog. After 30 minutes on backroads we got back on the parkway. The fog got so dense I was only following the center line at some points and even living in England for 3 years, I never experiance fog like that. We made it to Little Switzerland by 5PM for a break and to call our other friend from the ZZR forum who was meeting us at the Blue Ridge Motorcycle Campground that evening.

The rest of the ride was foggy, rainy, slow, and full of tourists until we got south of Asheville where the clouds finally parted and we got to pick up the pace a bit. We made camp by 7:45 just in time to order a good hot dinner then hit the road following Jack on his blue ZX-14 in seach of cold beer since the campground is located in a dry county. I didn't realize how much beer those hard bags will hold.

We headed back out Sunday morning at 9am and ended up back on the BRP for a short stretch before heading south east on my old familiar roads. After some nice high speed twisty stuff on Highway 28 and grinding off a few more milimeters on my pegs we got back home at 7PM.

915 miles over 2 days with only 330 of it on the interstate. The remaining 585 miles averaged 35MPH in rain... :dribble:

Rick, it was nice to meet you and Michelle. I'm glad the weather cleared enough for me to make Damascus. You'll have to make a return trip sometime when you can ride all of Shady Valley...in the dry! :lol:

I suspected you would hit some serious fog on the BRP...I know how bad it can be up there...BTDT. I was looking at the low hanging clouds in the mountains where we were riding and was guessing...sorry your trip was in such weather. But, wow! Sat was a 6:00am to 7:45pm day for you guys...I'm impressed...especially w/ a new rider on back...and scraping pegs to boot!! h34r: :assassin: h34r: :clapping: :yahoo:

Hey! Be safe whereever your unit is deployed. Hope to meet up w/ you again...in better weather. Give me a holler next time you're in the neighborhood.

 

[In10city]

Mike, I'll definatly look you up the next time I'm in the area. There's a member on the ZZR Forum that just moved up to Johnson City from Florida and offered me his spare bedroom so I'lll definately get back there eventually, if I get back from "elsewhere" in time I'll be back this year. If not, I'll definatley see you next year and I already plan on attending next year's EOM.