October 19
Whoever thought of these little self-serve waffle irons for the breakfast rooms at hotels should be awarded the Noble Peace Prize. As the trip wore on, the first question that Eric would ask at any prospective lodging place would be “Got a waffle iron”? Anything less would be uncivilized.
Today we left the Blue Ridge Parkway and entered it’s sister park, Shenandoah National Park, and it’s ridge top road, Skyline Drive. It is very similar to the Blue Ridge except that 1) it charges admission, and 2) the speed limit drops by 10 MPH. I was reminded of a line from an old James Taylor song: “Hurts my motor to go so slow”. It is true that these roads would be great fun at high speeds, but they are also wonderful when you are just loping along, not having to concentrate on your lines, soaking in the scenery. Kind of like savoring a glass of wine instead of doing shots of tequila.
Well, the analogy works for me.
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Today’s weather was similar to yesterdays, cool and overcast. About 30 miles up the Drive we entered a dense fog bank that cut visibility to just a few hundred feet and gave to woods an otherworldly look. The fog lasted 10 or 15 miles then slowly burned off. We stopped for gas and a snack at a little store, and it started to drizzle on us. Remembering yesterdays experience, we pressed on without raingear. The rain turned from a drizzle to a sprinkle, and showed no sign of letting up, so we pulled over at the next overlook to put on raingear. I remembered this particular overlook from previous trips, and thought of the expansive view that one normally had from here. Today, only clouds and fog.
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Skyline Drive came to an end far too quickly, and dumped us back into the real world of traffic lights and billboards at Front Royal, Virginia. We picked up Highway 340, headed north with the plan of spending the night in Gettysburg, PA. We had eaten a big breakfast at the hotel, so thought we would skip lunch so that we could cover some ground. Well, around 1PM, at a stoplight in some little town, Eric pulled up beside me and said “Let’s eat lunch”! I was glad to hear him say it, because the cold and rain had made me hungry, too. The next place that we saw that looked good was John’s Family Restaurant, south of Charlestown, WV. I have a firm belief that any place with “Family Restaurant” in the name probably has crappy food, but this time I was wrong. The waiter was stoned, but the food was good.
We finished around 2, and it was raining harder than when we had gone in. We saddled up and resumed the quest for Gettysburg. But after a few miles, I thought “This is stupid. It’s raining, it’s cold, and we are only about an hour and a half from Gettysburg. Take a room and see if the weather gets better in the morning”. This made even more sense when I considered that I wanted to take some snakey little roads up to Gettysburg instead of the high-speed four lanes, and those little roads would be way more fun dry. So I started looking for a hotel. We zipped past a Comfort Inn before I saw it, and I didn’t turn around, thinking that where there was one hotel, there would be several. Wrong. We passed the snakey little road that I wanted to take. Then we passed my alternate snakey little road. Still no hotels. Plenty of rain, plenty of traffic, but no hotels. After going WAY further than I intended, we found a Comfort Inn in Fredrick, Maryland.
After all of our time riding in fairly rural areas, it was clear that we were getting close to some big population centers. There was lots of traffic, lots of people, even the hotel was different…four stories with very small common areas, instead of the sprawling two stories that we had been staying in. When real estate is at a premium, you build up.
There was a steakhouse next door to the hotel, but we were both still full from lunch. I had a Snickers bar for dinner, Eric had a bag of chips, we watched the news, caught Clear And Present Danger on one of the movie channels, then hit the sack.
Stats: 176 miles, moving average 42.7 MPH, moving time 4.07, average speed 31, maximum speed 70.5