Woke up rested and refreshed, without even a hint of hangover. Showered, dressed, packed my stuff, then walked into the kitchen to find Buz had made breakfast! I’m not worthy!
Packed and full, I fire up the laptop for a quick review of my planned route, then hit the road.
Got caught in a sudden patch of rain, but it was warm enough to just be refreshing. By the time I made it out of Pittsburgh I left the rain behind and found some beautiful riding weather.
Strung together a seemingly endless run of great roads. When I finally got to 555 I was surprised to realize it wasn’t the highlight of the day. Still a great road, but with roughly 200 miles of traffic and cop free twisty mountain roads behind me it was ‘just’ another great road.
By that point I was getting tired and stupid from the heat, and still had over 150 miles of planned twisties ahead of me. My lines started going to shit, couldn’t read the roads to save my life, so I switched the GPS over to give me a direct route to camp, instantly dropping 90 minutes from my ETA. Foolishly, I’d neglected to select ‘avoid dirt’, so the next 15 miles or so were… interesting, and very, very slow. Corrected that setting and ended up with a mostly slab trip to camp, which suited me just fine at that point. Arrived at Shawnee shortly after 1900h, found I’d managed to reserve one of the only 3 sites that doesn’t have on site parking, humped all my stuff up the hill and set up camp. The area is beautiful, but I wouldn’t recommend it for tent camping, as there isn’t a flat, level tent site to be found.
Still, I can’t complain. I had a near perfect day of riding, arrived safely at camp with plenty of daylight left to make camp, and soon I’ll be trying out my new camp stove for the first time.
Tommorrow, USAF museum. I’ll try not to go too overboard with pictures.
Mileage: 343
States: PA, WV, OH
Lesson: 350 miles of fun roads is too much for one day at 30°C
Had to walk back down to the lake to find signal to post this… walking down the hill I got a great view of a field full of lighting bugs, just at dusk for perfect viewing.
ETA: Stove worked great, shame I’d forgotten to stop for groceries, but the “emergency food” was quick, easy, and tasty enough.
