Blue Ridge Trail

[BigBird]

My body still hurts from the half of this ride I did! The distanzia's will NOT be making an appearance at another dual sport ride!

DAMN - It was SO MUCH FUN riding behind you and watching the SHOW

[phoo]

Very cool trip and great storytelling! MOAR! MOAR!


~Patrick

[Skinny-J]

Day 4: Tuesday. After breakfast back at the Subway, it was time for Pat and Paul to start their long trip home. I did not envy them with the almost 300 some miles of interstates 77 and 81 that lay in front of them; but I knew I would miss having them in the group. So then there were 2. When signing up for this trip Sam had originally told me he needed to be back home by Friday mid-day. That worked well with my plans to run the BRT in its entirety so I was confident we would make it the whole way. But then I was already starting to get a little homesick, o.k. call me a wussie. So Sam and I conferred and made an executive decision. We would run the morning portion of today’s route and then with a little creative re-routing, jump over and pick-up the afternoon portion of tomorrow’s route. This would allow us to see Burkes Garden which from prior trips I knew was a must see and then hit the alleged single track in the Mt. Rogers Recreational Area. With a plan in the head and multiple routes in the GPS that were going to some how be combined at some point, we set off back up RT 52 to find where we has left the BRT in the dark the night before. Soon after getting back on the route, we turned on to Round Mountain Rd. Immediately this road looked very “promising” being narrow, rocky and steep. However within a quarter mile up the hill we came to a gate where ironically enough a forest ranger had just driven his truck through and was in the process of closing up behind him. With big round puppy-dog eyes we asked if the road was closed and from behind his gate he stated the obvious. We were told they were building new hiking and mountain bike trails up on the ridge and that the road was closed. “Awl come on, we are on skinny little motor bikes, we can scoot around any obstruction, we don’t “mind” that you are working up there, we can get around you.” “Sorry no dice”. Foiled by the government, Sam and I turned around and devised a detour into Burke’s Garden by way of the paved Burkes Garden Rd which was a real insane twisty treat. Eventually we found out way into the heart of Burkes Garden and took the compulsory shot as proof of life:



Heading out of Burkes Garden the road turns back to gravel and goes up and over the mountain in the most twisty serpentine way possible. Here is where I have to comment on the versatility of Dual-Sport motorcycles; 15 minutes earlier we were dragging pegs on asphalt followed up by sliding around gravel roads for the next 20 miles. We then jumped off of the official day 4 route and b-lined over to Marion, VA. This required us to ride Rt 16 up and then down through Hungry Mother State Park; someone was on meth when they decided they could build this twisty-arse road! In Marion we stopped for gas and got chatted up by some of the locals: “You boys ridden those motor-bikes”, “Yes Mamn”, “Well you be careful, theres a tornado warning for this here area”. Really? Like this trip has not had enough excitement; tornados? “O.k., we will just try to ride where they aint”. And with that we were off to pick up the day 5 route which included the alleged single track down through Mt. Rogers that I really wanted to be able to say we conquered. Now I keep saying “alleged” because in all my prior research about this area I have never been able to find where motorcycles were permitted to ride any of these trails. I knew of the Iron Mountain trail and how it used to be part of the Appalachian trail until it was later re-routed but I was still in disbelief that I could legally ride my dirt bike on this trail. However, the guy on ADV who put this route together was very meticulous in making sure the whole route was all legal so he was going to be my alibi if a forest ranger said otherwise.

Since the Iron Mountain Trail was completely off road, I knew my GPS would be useless to auto-route the trail and we would need to rely solely on track logs. Anticipating this, I had earlier created a waypoint for where the start of the Iron Mountain trail met the closest for real road and Sam and I followed Mr. Garmin to this spot. Upon arriving at this spot deep inside the Mt. Rogers recreational area, we found a closed gated dirt road with a sign reading “Road Work Ahead”. To confirm this is the trail access we were looking for, I tried to pull up the track for the northern section of the trail which I am 1000% certain I had loaded in the GPS 5 days earlier; it was not there; WTF! I could find the track log for the Southern section of the trail but the dang northern section had gone missing. After a brief discussion we decided we could get around the gate on the bikes so the closed road was our best option of finding the trail. We got around the gate no problem and started up the dirt road but it wasn’t half a mile before we came to a “crew” and their equipment from a tree removal company who were sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. Maybe they were pissed because we had interrupted their break, but the first fellow was not very helpful. “You boys can’t be here, didn’t you see the “Road Work” sign. Thinking to my self, is this what you call road work, sitting against a tree; “Oh, sorry, the sign did not say closed, just that there was some work going on. We were just trying to find the Iron Mountain Trail”. In reply we heard “You can’t ride motorcycles on that trail, if they catch you they will give you a ticket for that”. Us, “Oh, we had heard you can”. Just then another younger guy piped up. “Well if you continue up the road you will run into the trail. I know you can’t ride north from here as there is a sign that says hiking\horses only, but I don’t know about south”. Us: “Oh, would it be o.k if we rode up and looked?”; (like we weren’t going to anyway….) Having defeated the closed gate and now winning over the keepers of the Iron mountain trail with our cordial attitude, we were allowed to pass. Shortly, the road ended and there it was directly in front of us; SINGLE TRACK! We saw the sign with the restrictions the guy had told us about but the sign was kinda ambiguous as to if it applied to both directions or just north like he said. Well we did not have a track log of the trail but some guy told us he didn’t know if the part we wanted was legal for us to ride or not; o.k. good enough for us, we kicked it into gear and started down the trail. It was starting to be a fun little trail with rocks and the occasional small log to jump; and then we rounded a turn and the trail split into 2 different directions. Which way do we go; let me check the track log; sh*t, no track log!!! As we sat there pondering our decision, it started to rain. And then it REALLY started to rain. Sh*t, here comes the tornadoes, I can almost guarantee it. Even with the voice in my head screaming “adventure it THAT way”, my conservative nature kicked in and I told Sam I thought we should turn around as there were just too many things making me uncomfortable. Not only did we NOT know if where we were riding was legal, but if we choose the wrong trail, it could easily take us to the wrong place (the Mt. Rogers recreational area is a BIG place) or it could get really nasty and with the torrential rains that had caught us, I thought it would be more prudent if we bailed on this section and just found our way down to the next section where I did have a track log for. Sam did not protest but I think he would have just picked a trail and carried on with out any worries even if I wasn’t there; that’s how he rolls. We turned around and had soon made our way back out to the closed road, then down past the tree guys who were now sitting in their dry trucks watching us go by and finally back out to the paved road we came in on. We pulled over and parked the bikes and stood around and waited for the frog-strangler of a rain storm to ease up. The Iron Mountain trail remained allusive but the day was not over…

[BigBird]

DAMN J- You're a GREAT story teller. Now you've got me all excited and on edge waiting to hear where we go NEXT

[trialsrider]

Day 4: Tuesday. After breakfast back at the Subway, it was time for Pat and Paul to start their long trip home. I did not envy them with the almost 300 some miles of interstates 77 and 81 that lay in front of them; but I knew I would miss having them in the group.

So I guess those Distanzia's made up for the all the falling on the 300 miles home?

[mdubya]

[Wingfixer]

I'm going to go with, yes. Mainly because thats what I did. But, I won't be doing it again.

[Skinny-J]

After 15 minutes or so the deluge of rain toned down to a tolerable steady rain and we decided to mount up. Part of me was thinking that I could not possibly be any wetter so why not and still another part of me was thinking if we sat in one place too long, the way this trip had gone so far, we were only taunting the tornadoes we had been warned about to come find us. We eased back on to the paved road and set out to find the next access point of the Iron Mountain trail where I actually had a track log for in the GPS. As we started down the back side of the mountain in the continuing rain, my bike started to develop a miss. It was a random miss, but it particularly enjoyed showing up just as I would go into a turn and try to roll on the power. This made for a very “interesting” decent down the curvy wet mountain road, in the steady rain where visibility sucked, while trying to hold a line through each turn where the bike would randomly cut out and back in. At the bottom of the hill I pulled over to consult with Sam and see what was going on with the bike. Clearly the bike was not happy about all the rain but I had never experienced a problem like this with it before. Was it smart to continue on? Even if we find the trail, what if the bike decides to go from bad to worse and quits on the trail? From our wet seats, Sam and I decided it was probably the plug, or plug wire or CDI or something getting wet (you think?) We sat there with it running for a while and it did not protest about idling which is about the hardest thing you can make an engine do; and at higher RPM’s, at least without being under a load, it seemed to be better now. O.k., let’s roll on!..... Knowing GPS and the issues that it is prone to, I was at least smart enough to have 5 days earlier created a second Waypoint where I noticed the Iron Mountain Trail intersecting some random fire road; just in case something like this happened. Therefore, it was a very simple matter to have the GPS auto route us to this waypoint. From the main road we were on, we found the fire road with no problems. We then started climbing back up the mountain and we soon came to the spot where the track log for the trail appeared to be intersecting the fire road. We looked around and saw at least 4 different trail heads leading off in different directions; WTF! I got off the bike and started walking around; the first trail appeared to be a rouge trail that perhaps 4x4’s were playing around on. The Park Service had put up a sign saying No-No on that one. There were 2 other trails both of which were gated and both of which were very grown up with vegetation and almost appeared to be abandoned. The last option was just the continuation of the fire road we rode in on; well this doesn’t look promising. I walked around some more and saw one other tiny opening in an other wise solid wall of trees and thick vegetation and being desperate hiked up to it. Not far up the VERY narrow trail was a sign: “Iron Mountain Trail connector” “Iron Mountain Trail .5 miles ahead”. Awesome!!! We had found it!! But wait, at the bottom of the sign was pretty pictures of the things which were permitted on the trail: a hiker, a horse, a bicycle; and; and wait for it; yes, why Dorothy it is; a picture of a MOTORCYCLE!!!! Holy crap, not only had we found the Iron Mountain Trail, they were actually inviting us to ride it! I jubilantly returned to Sam and told him of my find. We mounted up and rode over to the sign where I stopped and pointed out the picture on the sign of the beautiful motorcycle. Grinning from ear to ear, we started our ride of SINGLE TRACK on the Iron Mountain Trail. The trail was great and did not disappoint. At times it was no wider than one motorcycle with our saddle bags doing a little trail pruning as we went. You could tell the creators of the trail made a lot of effort to keep the elevation changes to a minimum as the trail tended to follow the side of each hill, but there were times, especially in transitioning from hill to hill, where the trail had to drop down into some little creek or gully and then blast up the other side; these transitions were GREAT. At one point Sam was leading and the trail was running along the side of a hill. It was straight up hill to the right and straight down hill to the left with about 9 inches of flat trail in between; well flat trail with large wet roots sticking up. I think I said to my self “o.k. watch these wet roots don’t slide the rear-end off the trail”, and that was when the wet roots slid the rear-end off the trail; SH*T!! I quickly stopped before I ended up sending the whole bike down the 40 feet of nothing to my left. The front was still on the 9 inches of level trail but the back was now kicked off the edge of the flat part and just dangling along on the little bit of the earth that made up the nothing to the left. O.K., maybe I can just drive the rear back up on to the trail; as I ease out the clutch the rear tire just starts to spin and wants to slide down even further into the nothingness; fuk!! Sam had not seen any of this happen and had managed to paddle his 250 through this section without any problem and was steady disappearing down the trail at this point. I made an executive decision that to salvage this situation was going to require some man-handling of the big 650; but I did not know if I was enough of a man. I dismounted and laid the bike down on the up hill side. Now all I had to do was drag the rear back up onto the trail; crikeys this thing is heavy! I tugged and I pulled; but the foot peg and saddle bag from the side on the ground were acting as anchors and this little ole ant couldn’t move the rubber tree plant…. I took a couple more deep breaths and screamed “By the power of gray-skull!” and started tugging again and little by little it moved closer and closer. Finally I had the whole bike back up on the trail; all that was left was to pick it back up onto 2 wheels; crikeys this thing is heavy! Finally I was back under way, and not 2 minutes later I ran into Sam coming back to look for me. With the trail being only 9 inches wide, there are not a lot of opportunities to turn around so he was a true friend to have done this. We both got straightened around and continued down the trail. At some point the steady rain which had been falling mostly stopped but I was so intent on reading the trail, picking lines and blasting along at a pretty good clip that I barely even noticed. Eventually the trail worked its way down off the mountain and ran along side and crossed a small stream multiple times. This was a very enjoyable ending to the trail which soon took us all the way into Damascus VA where we grabbed some lunch at the local pizza shop.

Damascus was a unique little town with a weird vibe. You had a few local residents and then the place was also inundated with yuppie bicycle riders along with hippy hikers. Apparently both the Appalachian Trail, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the Trans-America National Bicycle Trail and the Iron Mountain Trail all happen to run right through Damascus. The only solace I took in seeing all these different people is that the same rain storm that caught us had also rained on their parade and lots of them were walking around looking like drowned rats; it was nice not being the only ones in the wet-club for a change. From Damascus we were about 4 miles from the Tennessee border and in my younger days I would have rode down and touched the line so I could officially say I was there. However, in explaining to people what I did with my vacation I have simply been saying I rode to Tennessee and back on all back roads; am I exaggerating too much? Regardless, the southern terminus of our journey had ended and for the first time in 4 days, we intentionally pointed our front wheels north. The plan for what remained of the day was to ride 80 to 90 miles northeast and end up in Fancy Gap near the Blue Ridge Parkway so over the next 2 days we would still have reasonable milage days to allow for some more off-road antics as we made our way home. Soon after departing Damascus, another steady rain started to fall and would stick with us for the rest of the afternoon. We were mostly still riding the official BRT route and it was a darn shame the rain kept our tempo down as the roads were great little twisty back roads running through the Mt Rogers area. It was an interesting ride full of dichotomies; we would round a turn and be presented with a gorgeous valley that we would then get to ride through and there was no other place in the world I wanted to be; which would be followed by thoughts of how awlful riding in this cold rain with nothing but motorcross gear on just sucked a big hairy one. We had covered about 55 tough miles and at one point, we stopped at an intersection that had what appeared to be an abandoned thrift store on the corner. Sam started snooping around and soon found a piece of a plastic tarp that he proceeded to stuff in his jacket; he was getting cold! He graciously offered to share his prized piece of trash with me but I declined; I was just happy my bike was tolerating this rain o.k. and not missing like earlier. I checked the GPS and we had another 35 miles to go to reach Fancy Gap. We mounted back up and rode on and soon rolled into the town of Independence, VA. As we rode through town I noticed a little Mexican restaurant, a beer store and then, like the shinning Holy Grail beacon which drew brave Sir Galahad to the Castle Anthrax in Monty Python, perched up on a hill was the Grayson Inn and Suites. Ok., forget Fancy Gap I want off this wet-bike right NOW! The Grayson Inn and Suites sounded expensive though? Up until now our most extravagant motel had cost us only $60 so we couldn’t buy our way out of the rain now and still be able to hold our heads high. After a brief consult with Sam, we were in agreement that we should at least check it out. We swung off the road and cruised up the hill to the hotel entrance. As we pulled in there was a large car-port out side of the lobby entrance where we parked and at least got out of the rain for a few minutes; but this was a pretty fancy amenity at a pretty nice hotel; I didn’t see a reasonable price happening but in I went. “Hi, how much for a room tonight?”, “$105”, “Oh, are you really full tonight?”, “no”, “Oh, then you don’t have any excess rooms that you could go any lower on?”, “Well maybe I could do $85”, “Oh, we were just traveling on our way home and got caught in the rain….”, “Where are you from?”, “Baltimore”, “Oh my sister lives near Baltimore”, “Really, where?” “xxxx town”, “No kidding; me too!”, “Really!”, “Yeah! (not really), I love it there”;…. “O,k., how about $65?”, “DEAL!”. We unpacked out bikes and took a nice hot shower and warmed up. By then it had stopped raining and we went down to the Mexican place, had dinner, picked up some beers and came back to the room and watched back to back episodes of Tosh.O. And with that day 4 on the BRT was done, hopefully tomorrow would bring blue skys for our run up the BRP and our last day of off road adventures….

[bonehead]

Awesome, o I am jealous but happy to hear you guys had fun.

[Gene-TW200]

Looks like all I did was the sissy section on day one !! The more Jay writes the more I might have made the right choice ? Doesn't sound much like a ameuture ride .