Great Day to Ride the Parkway

Today was a great day. The temperature this morning was about 70 degrees when Slick and I headed out to ride to the Blue Ridge Parkway and met Cindy and Scott. Slick and I headed out around 10:30 and headed toward Fancy Gap on highway 52. It was a great day to ride. Since it was Sunday morning traffic was pretty Lite. But there were plenty of other bikers out on the roads on the way up to the BRP, thru it and on the way home.

Slick and I were all decked out in our “Old Biker” clothes (including our cool vest). Actually the vest got pretty hot for me on the way home when the temperature got up to 83. Anyway, we headed up to Fancy Gap and we had planned to met Scott and Cindy Stevenson just right off the parkway just south of highway 21. We were not exactly sure which site to stop at and of course, we drove right by it. We were early so we didn’t really miss them because they had not reached the park. We just ended up riding about an extra 20 miles and ending up heading toward Wilkesboro

Once we realized we needed to turn around we headed back to an area that we thought they were talking about. And sure enough, 20 miles back, we found Scott and Cindy waiting on us. They had been there 30 minutes. Oh well, at least they got to enjoy the scenery, right?

After a little chat about the mix up, we got on our bikes and headed out to get something to eat. Slick and I were pretty hungry. We had been on the road for about 3 hours and ate little for breakfast. So our plan was to grab a bite to eat and get some fuel. I was getting low due to running all over the park looking for our riding partners. We were pretty lucky since Scott grew up near the parkway and go us up and running and looking for food and fuel. We went to a couple of eating joints near the parkway but the wait was too long. So we ended up eating at one really nasty Wendy’s. The food was okay, but the place was a dump. After the nasty food we headed onward on highway 16, toward 421 and home.

On the route Scott took us on some great two lane roads once we got off the parkway. It was all country roads. The parkway was great and Slick and I really enjoyed it. Even though the speed limit was 45 it was really nice. The scenery was great and so was the weather (Did I mention it was in the mid 70’s). We could have not asked for a nicer day to ride.

All-in-all we ended up riding 400+ miles and were gone 8 hours. Once home, I washed Big Red and got it ready for the week of riding. Next weekend is going to be even better because Slick and I plan to head to Skyline Drive in VA and ride the BRP some more this Memorial Day weekend. We are really looking forward to that.

Until next time and enjoy the ride!

Pappy