September 19

Last night's weather forecast had shown rain in Ohio, headed our way, so the first thing I did when I got up was look out the window.  The pavement was wet and cars had their wipers on, but most of the rain had already moved through, so by the time we got to the bikes, the sun was peeping through holes in the clouds, and we didn't get any rain all day.

Today I wanted to hit a series of roads that I had heard about in northern West Virginia.  They started in the area of Kingwood, so I once again let the Garmin do the navigating.  This was getting to be a habit, and a good one.  As long as I specified that the GPS stick to "minor roads", we had a lot of fun.  The unit would still try to put us on an Interstate once in a while, but in those cases I would just ignore it, run past the exit, and soon it would recalculate the route onto little country roads, some so "minor" that they wouldn't show on anything bigger than a county map.  We were ridding some real "hidden roads", roads used only by the locals.  That is how you are supposed to travel on a motorcycle.

We crossed the Pennsylvania/West Virginia border on 281, and were officially back in the South.  Is West Virginia really the South?  Well, by this measure it is...

Once we entered West Virginia, the definition of "minor road" changed.

We came to a 3 way intersection at a church.  I turned and went down the road that I thought the GPS was indicating.  Wrong.  We backtracked and started down the other road.  Wrong again.  We certainly couldn't come back down the road we arrived on!  I scratched my head and looked around.  What I saw on the GPS did not seem to agree with what I was seeing on the ground.  The only other option was that driveway beside the church.  Could it possibly be...

That "driveway" was a county road.

No signs, no centerlines, no fog lines, and in many spots, precious little pavement.  We later joked that these roads had been paved right after the Civil War, and just patched since.  The crazy thing was the lack of signage.  These were county roads, yet on many of them we saw no route numbers, not even signs with local road names.  If the GPS had crapped out, we would have been bad lost.  We rode through dense woods, so dense that the trees blotted out the sun, which made dodging the potholes all that more difficult.  Many of the scattered houses that we saw had outhouses.  I saw several places where they were raising gamecocks.  At one point, we came to a sign (YES, A SIGN!) that said "Road goes to one lane", and I wondered how much more "one lane" it could get.  Were we going to have to drag the bikes through the trees?  I mean to tell you, we were in the sticks.

It was heaven.

Just south of Parsons, after passing through the hamlet of Hendricks, 72 became an entirely different road.  It became steep and tight, with lots of blind curves, barely a lane and half wide, and the oncoming locals were driving at full tilt.  What a blast!

All good things must come to an end, and 72 ended at Highway 32.  From there, I routed the GPS to another gem discovered online, Smoke Hole Road.  This road is listed on some maps as Public Road 74, and runs north-south through the Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, along the valley formed by the south branch of the Potomac River.

Heaven once again.

This road reminded me a lot of Deal's Gap back in the Smokies.  Running through Federal land, there are no billboards, and very few driveways, with the cross-traffic, gravel, and dogs that come along with them.  It winds and dips and snakes and whoops and does everything it can to entertain a sporting rider.  The pavement was excellent on the north end, degrading a bit as we headed south, becoming a bit chopped up, and scattered with pea gravel.  The bike squirmed on me twice in the gravel, so we backed it off and rode at a more relaxed pace on the southern end.  That was fine, because the scenery was outstanding.

There are several other small roads that run off of Smoke Hole into the forest.  I could easily burn up a day exploring this area.

Today was one of the most outstanding days of riding I have ever had.  The weather cleared off nicely, temps were mild, and the roads were too good to be true.  I could ride this area for weeks and not get bored.  Those of you that live there...lucky dogs!

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