“Country roads take me home to the place I belong”, Toots and the Maytals covered a song with these lines in it and this explains perfectly our experience of the roads of Maryland and Virginia.
We woke up today at 5:43am at UPenn, it was dark and cold out and we didn’t want to get out of our sleeping bags. After 43 minutes of hitting the snooze button we got out of bed got dressed, packed up and headed out the door. The best part was that our bikes were right where we left them in west Philadelphia. It took us a while to get out of the rainy city on rt. 3 west and after we found rt. 1 and negotiated the traffic we carved on some of the best roads so far on our trip. We put about 100 miles on the bikes before stopping for breakfast. If you ever get the chance to travel to Maryland try rt. 137 and 138, just a delight. After breakfast we got on 23w towards Shenandoah National Park.
While stopping on rt. 340 to change our oil we ran into a wonderful fellow in the parking lot of the auto store. Baseball hat, glasses, trimmed beard and stepping out of a large pickup, our new friend walked right over to us and started chatting, talking about our bikes and the trip. He turned to head into the store and got about five steps towards the door when he did a 180 and walked right back to us asking, “what are you boys gonna do with that oil when your done changing it?” I replied that we were going to toss it in the auto store. “Do you mind if I buy a funnel, bottle it up and take it.” Be my guest I replied and continued changing the oil. He came back out with yellow funnel in hand and we proceeded to dump the oil from the pan through the funnel and into the now empty new oil containers. He was going to use the oil for one of his cars and we were delighted because we didn’t have to throw it away, he even wanted the pan. The best part of the whole situation is not that he took our oil and we made a new friend, but then he traded the 4 quarts of used oil that we were going to throw away for 4 fresh amazing apples from his farm. I shit you not, that was the best apple I have ever had.
We arrived in Front Royal at about 2:30 looking for gear for the night, fuel for the stove, food, etc. we dilly dallied and at Stokes General Store where we bought our goodies we ran into a guy who rode cross-country though not on a motorcycle as you might suspect, but on horseback in the 1970’s. Funny the people you meet on the road.
Our goal for the night was to camp in Shenandoah National Park and the only way to get there to our knowledge was to take Skyline Drive, the only problem was that the road closed at 5:00 and we arrived at 5:18. So like any young adventurers we drove around the locked gate and into the park.
It was a trip let me tell you. Not 2 miles into the park we came around a corner only to be confronted by a wall of fog. The speed limit was 35, but you can barley do that speed because visibility was all of about 15 feet. We rolled on and saw about a dozen deer crossing the road. The fog also made it feel as though we were floating; we had no sense of direction; the only thing to do was to follow the double yellow line. It was kinda like in the Super Mario Bro's game on the original Nentendo where the guy stays in one place and the landscape moves around him. It felt like we weren't in control and all we were doing was leaning the bikes this way and that with the ground going by us. We pulled over after about 20 miles of this dream state and had to just laugh with each other at how ridiculously amazing the drive had been so far. And just as we are giving our high fives in pitch black a pair of head beams hits us that belong to the park ranger.
“hello, how are you guys doing tonight.”
“good and yourself sir?”
“Good. Did you know that this road closed at 5pm, what time did you get on the road, was the gate open?”
“Around 5ish.”
“Was the gate open?”
(we pause)
“Yes, the gate was open.”
“Are you sure the gate wasn’t closed? Well the park is closed so you will have to follow me out.”
No comments:
Post a Comment