Pete's
Fall Tour, 2006
Sometimes
you just can't sit at the shop all day and watch everyone else go
out and have fun. So with a few friends out on long extended tours
I decided to throw together a quickie. Seven days and one wild and
wonderful state to cover. Jim Schulz and I made an excursion across
West Virginia taking nothing but back roads and rail trail connectors.
Our goal was to ride the Monongahela National Forest from north
to south. We came close to meeting our goal but due to a bad weather
day we spent about 23 hours pent up in an old hunting motel watching
movies
and
the weather. It was a crucial point in the trip since we were going
to enter a section of the national forrest that was extremely desolate.
So we waited around feeling like we were at base camp of Everest
waiting for the go ahead.
Every
day is an adventure when you get up and have nothing to do but ride
your
bike and find the next place
to camp. Sometimes finding that spot to bed down is not very easy
as on our second night, when we were forced to camp in a cemetery.
West
Virginia has an incredible system of trails that are nonmotorized
and, for the most part, vastly underused. With connections on back
roads, the amount of traffic we saw in a week's time was next
to nil. As for
our machines we used 29" mountain bikes with off-road tires
and towed BOB trailers. Although not the most efficient vehicle,
this setup
allows one to go anywhere so when the road sours your mood it was
easy to find a less-traveled road or even a trail for that matter.
Due
to the season and elevations we were traveling we were forced
to take
a little more in the clothing department but I was still able
to keep my load fairly reasonable weight wise.
Food turned out to be the biggest issue. This was our first attempt
(having done several loaded tours together before) to purposely pick
a route that did not have too many towns between points. Places to
get provisions
were
few
and
what
they had
in
inventory was pretty slim. Hopefully we can interest a chef into
bike touring
for our next excursion. That revelation came to us on the second
night of tuna fish and crackers for dinner.
Overall the trip was a slamming success. Dots on the map were
connected by wonderful roads. We traveled in and out of fall
colors, met
a lot of people along the way and saw days of undisturbed mountain
scenery.
But the best thing about vacations is that you finally get to
go home.
--
Pete, Oct. 22
Click
on the images below for larger images and captions.
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