Dirt_Dad
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For the fourth time in the last five years my wife and I have headed north for a long summer ride. It's usually cooler, and there is some great riding between the Adirondacks and Newfoundland. The last two trips have been focused on the Canadian destinations of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, leaving the northern states primarily as "ride through" areas on the way to the intended province. Although we never truly know where we will end up during our rides, this time we did anticipate spending most of our time between the Adirondacks and Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.
This was a very big ride for my Dirt_Mom (DM) who decided to stay off a motorcycle for all of 2013 as she recovered from spinal fusion surgery. The early part of this year was spent easing her back into riding. Short hour long rides at first, then eventually longer and longer rides. She took a very deliberate approach to building back to longer rides. She built up to a 4 day Blue Ridge Parkway ride a couple of months ago, and it went well. We were optimistic she would be able to handle our expected 10 day ride in the north. Those rides taught us we should cut down our normal ride day from 7 to 6 hours to avoid pushing her too hard. Stopping at 3:30 seemed to be a better time for her comfort level.
Since we have been through the northern states so many times I spent little time planning the ride until the week before leaving. Honestly I spent more time downloading hotel booking apps to my phone than I did looking at routes. A fellow member here (Indyrider) was kind enough to provide a suggested route through the Catskills, an area I've never found interesting in the past. Planning was also aided by the discovery of a great ride planning website.
http://www.newenglandriders.org/great_routes_and_rides/best_motorcycle_rides.htm
With the assistance of that site I went from a nearly empty GPS, to one overflowing with routes.
Routes were copied making a loop in each direction to give us plenty of options.
Day one was fairly dull with hours on the highway getting into position to start the "real" ride. A little after 3:00, we crossed into New York and I decided to stop and start using my new hotel apps to find a place for the evening. Hum...nothing here in this town without an over priced rating. The next closest ones are a 15 mile back track. We both don't care to back track. Always moving forward. I went to the map view and zoomed out. Good a couple of nice looking places ahead. I booked online, then I plugged then I clicked navigate to the hotel. 96 minutes away... ??? Crap, and I've already sent in my credit card info. I break the news to DM. Fortunately she takes the news in stride.
I spend the next few minutes trying to put the destination into the Garmin GPS. Address not found, heck, town not even found.
I decided to put the phone on the charger, and into the tank bag map pocket so I can navigate off the phone as best as possible. That seems to be working pretty well. 15 minutes later, getting close to the first turn, I look down at the phone and it's turned off. :question: Pull off the road, restart the phone and it tell me it over heated. I spend the next few minutes zooming in and out with the phone and Garmin until I can put a general area into the Garmin. And were off again.
Arriving in the two the hotel was still not in the Garmin. I made a couple of bad guesses then pulled over to fire up the phone again. Fortunately a nice lady pulled up and asked, "are you guys lost?" Apparently it was obvious. She was very helpful with local directions and we finally arrived at the hotel after a nice 11 hour ride. So much for taking it easy on DM. At least it was a lovely setting in the Catskills.
Day 2 - We met some local riders on the ferry from NY to VT. They suggested a nice route to Killington. Never been to Killington. Growing up in NY the holy grail of skiing was to ski Killington. Hey, why not. There should be lots of hotels there. It was a very nice route they suggested, and for the second time in our two day trip I overshot the intended shorter ride day. I did a little better and it was only a 10 hour ride day.
I stopped in one of the ski hotels and booked a room. It never dawned on me that this is a ski town and AC is not necessarily high on the priority list for hotel rooms. It was a warm day, and DM definitely noticed the lack of AC. Once again, she took it all in stride. Lucky me.
Day 3 - I wanted to see Killington. It's an impressive area, but hard to capture adequately with a camera.
Our attempt to find the mountain road, placed us directly on a race track that had been setup for some type of event. We rode along and started noticing hay bails along the road. Strange, but didn't think too much of it until they became more and more prevalent. We went around the next corner and there was a rental truck blocking the entire road at an intersection. We turned at the intersection and again didn't think too much about it. That road dead ended at this ski area.
Some very nicely positioned houses on the left.
We went back to the intersection where the truck had been blocking the road. The truck was gone but someone posted at the intersection told us we could go down the mountain, don't go too fast, and be careful. As he told us that, he kept looking up the mountain as if he expected someone to come flying down it. We started down, hay bails were everywhere now. Some corners had them stacked so thickly they would make a nice landing spot. Half way down the mountain we found the Ryder truck again. This time with guys wearing helmets and loading what looked to be adult sized Big Wheels into the back for the ride up the mountain. Too cool. Seemed like that would be a blast. Unfortunately since we were on their race track I didn't feel right stopping to take a picture. Only got this one at the bottom of the course where the police were posted to keep anyone from going up. The cars to the left were there for the race.
At this point I pulled up the Killington Loop route from the website I had found. The description of the route read something like, "If you like twisties, this will quickly become a favorite route." I'll be kind and say, it's not going to be a favorite route anytime soon. Dull meandering roads are not what we were expecting. I know some have said there are no bad roads in Vermont. I had always said I've never found a good road in Vermont. That's not true, but good roads were more the exception. Even our new friends from the ferry laughed at the notion of no bad roads in VT. The said there's endless bad roads here.
We continued on to the coast. Our target for the evening Hampton Beach, NH. We got to town so early that I told DM we'll take a quick ride to the beach to see where the whale watching boat would leave from the next day. We are not beach people, and we had no idea that we were at the place where thousands of people were leaving for the day. We sat for 45 minutes in a traffic jam that would impress my fellow DC commuters. In the hot sun (Klim gear), riding the clutch when able to move a little...it was very unpleasant. DM was wondering why she hadn't just sent me down from the hotel to check it out. So for the third day in a row, I missed giving her a pleasant, easy, short riding day. She's hot and exhausted, but still somehow, not trying to take my head off.
Day 4, no bikes. Simply a day to take a taxi to the beach, have a nice lunch, then do some whale watching. Sounded like a great idea. And for the most part it was.
I will say that if you look at the advertising for a whale watching tour, and you believe it, you could be disappointed. Mostly it looks like this.
A whale off in a distance sends a spout of water into the air. Four large boats all start heading that direction. Usually when the boat get close, the whale dives and disappears. There are slight variations on that sequence, but overall, that is whale watching. A scheduled five hours of that is a long, long time. People were passed out sleeping in the sun on our boat after a couple of hours. Mercifully our ride was cut to 4 hours. Nice to be out on the water enjoying the sun. Just don't plan to see whales flying through the air or anything like that.
This was a very big ride for my Dirt_Mom (DM) who decided to stay off a motorcycle for all of 2013 as she recovered from spinal fusion surgery. The early part of this year was spent easing her back into riding. Short hour long rides at first, then eventually longer and longer rides. She took a very deliberate approach to building back to longer rides. She built up to a 4 day Blue Ridge Parkway ride a couple of months ago, and it went well. We were optimistic she would be able to handle our expected 10 day ride in the north. Those rides taught us we should cut down our normal ride day from 7 to 6 hours to avoid pushing her too hard. Stopping at 3:30 seemed to be a better time for her comfort level.
Since we have been through the northern states so many times I spent little time planning the ride until the week before leaving. Honestly I spent more time downloading hotel booking apps to my phone than I did looking at routes. A fellow member here (Indyrider) was kind enough to provide a suggested route through the Catskills, an area I've never found interesting in the past. Planning was also aided by the discovery of a great ride planning website.
http://www.newenglandriders.org/great_routes_and_rides/best_motorcycle_rides.htm
With the assistance of that site I went from a nearly empty GPS, to one overflowing with routes.
Routes were copied making a loop in each direction to give us plenty of options.
Day one was fairly dull with hours on the highway getting into position to start the "real" ride. A little after 3:00, we crossed into New York and I decided to stop and start using my new hotel apps to find a place for the evening. Hum...nothing here in this town without an over priced rating. The next closest ones are a 15 mile back track. We both don't care to back track. Always moving forward. I went to the map view and zoomed out. Good a couple of nice looking places ahead. I booked online, then I plugged then I clicked navigate to the hotel. 96 minutes away... ??? Crap, and I've already sent in my credit card info. I break the news to DM. Fortunately she takes the news in stride.
I spend the next few minutes trying to put the destination into the Garmin GPS. Address not found, heck, town not even found.
I decided to put the phone on the charger, and into the tank bag map pocket so I can navigate off the phone as best as possible. That seems to be working pretty well. 15 minutes later, getting close to the first turn, I look down at the phone and it's turned off. :question: Pull off the road, restart the phone and it tell me it over heated. I spend the next few minutes zooming in and out with the phone and Garmin until I can put a general area into the Garmin. And were off again. Arriving in the two the hotel was still not in the Garmin. I made a couple of bad guesses then pulled over to fire up the phone again. Fortunately a nice lady pulled up and asked, "are you guys lost?" Apparently it was obvious. She was very helpful with local directions and we finally arrived at the hotel after a nice 11 hour ride. So much for taking it easy on DM. At least it was a lovely setting in the Catskills.
Day 2 - We met some local riders on the ferry from NY to VT. They suggested a nice route to Killington. Never been to Killington. Growing up in NY the holy grail of skiing was to ski Killington. Hey, why not. There should be lots of hotels there. It was a very nice route they suggested, and for the second time in our two day trip I overshot the intended shorter ride day. I did a little better and it was only a 10 hour ride day.
I stopped in one of the ski hotels and booked a room. It never dawned on me that this is a ski town and AC is not necessarily high on the priority list for hotel rooms. It was a warm day, and DM definitely noticed the lack of AC. Once again, she took it all in stride. Lucky me.
Day 3 - I wanted to see Killington. It's an impressive area, but hard to capture adequately with a camera.
Our attempt to find the mountain road, placed us directly on a race track that had been setup for some type of event. We rode along and started noticing hay bails along the road. Strange, but didn't think too much of it until they became more and more prevalent. We went around the next corner and there was a rental truck blocking the entire road at an intersection. We turned at the intersection and again didn't think too much about it. That road dead ended at this ski area.
Some very nicely positioned houses on the left.
We went back to the intersection where the truck had been blocking the road. The truck was gone but someone posted at the intersection told us we could go down the mountain, don't go too fast, and be careful. As he told us that, he kept looking up the mountain as if he expected someone to come flying down it. We started down, hay bails were everywhere now. Some corners had them stacked so thickly they would make a nice landing spot. Half way down the mountain we found the Ryder truck again. This time with guys wearing helmets and loading what looked to be adult sized Big Wheels into the back for the ride up the mountain. Too cool. Seemed like that would be a blast. Unfortunately since we were on their race track I didn't feel right stopping to take a picture. Only got this one at the bottom of the course where the police were posted to keep anyone from going up. The cars to the left were there for the race.
At this point I pulled up the Killington Loop route from the website I had found. The description of the route read something like, "If you like twisties, this will quickly become a favorite route." I'll be kind and say, it's not going to be a favorite route anytime soon. Dull meandering roads are not what we were expecting. I know some have said there are no bad roads in Vermont. I had always said I've never found a good road in Vermont. That's not true, but good roads were more the exception. Even our new friends from the ferry laughed at the notion of no bad roads in VT. The said there's endless bad roads here.
We continued on to the coast. Our target for the evening Hampton Beach, NH. We got to town so early that I told DM we'll take a quick ride to the beach to see where the whale watching boat would leave from the next day. We are not beach people, and we had no idea that we were at the place where thousands of people were leaving for the day. We sat for 45 minutes in a traffic jam that would impress my fellow DC commuters. In the hot sun (Klim gear), riding the clutch when able to move a little...it was very unpleasant. DM was wondering why she hadn't just sent me down from the hotel to check it out. So for the third day in a row, I missed giving her a pleasant, easy, short riding day. She's hot and exhausted, but still somehow, not trying to take my head off.
Day 4, no bikes. Simply a day to take a taxi to the beach, have a nice lunch, then do some whale watching. Sounded like a great idea. And for the most part it was.
I will say that if you look at the advertising for a whale watching tour, and you believe it, you could be disappointed. Mostly it looks like this.
A whale off in a distance sends a spout of water into the air. Four large boats all start heading that direction. Usually when the boat get close, the whale dives and disappears. There are slight variations on that sequence, but overall, that is whale watching. A scheduled five hours of that is a long, long time. People were passed out sleeping in the sun on our boat after a couple of hours. Mercifully our ride was cut to 4 hours. Nice to be out on the water enjoying the sun. Just don't plan to see whales flying through the air or anything like that.
