Just a ride to do more testing of the components. No set destination
It's been since Nov 18th since we've ridden. There's no real plan of where to ride. North and West? West? Local road? Olney? South? Not sure.
Need gloves. Duncan needs electrics
Another day, another ride around the outskirts of the DC area
1000 miles of Kentucky's Best Unpaved Roads and Trails
To our surprise there are quite a few very nice twisty hilly roads in the area East of Front Royal and North of I66. The weather was gorgeous with dramatic skies. It was cool and windy but very pleasant. Our first target was Virginia Route 626 which is a beautiful rolling old rock wall lined road that wends its way through the countryside. From there we intersected 50 and turned left on SR 713 which was another simply beautiful road. We encountered a number of beautiful very old homes along the way. We made our way to Route 17 which we had ridden last weekend and stopped at Sky Meadows State Park where some civil war event was taking place. From there we headed North to Route 601 which is this tree lined dramatically hilly and curvy mountain road. We missed our planned turn and found ourselves on 7. We turned left onto Route 606 along the Shenandoah River. At one point as we slowed down to look for a spot to take a photo, a large branch fell in the roadway ahead of us. There were just too many good roads to remember them all. Cold Stream Road towards the end of the day off 29 stands out as does Route 6. The sun started to set as we turned onto Route 522 North which marked the point we started our way home.
A 352.9 mile day ride on a Suzuki DR650SE seems much longer. We headed across the Potomac 301 bridge from Maryland into Virginia and then South into farm country. It was a day of alternating really good small country roads punctuated by traffic laden urban sprawl. There were several notably good roads. Route 17 North of 66 turned out to be a surprisingly nice ride along hills we had not explored. Further South in the shadow of the small mountain range Skyline Drive winds its way along, we found a number of quite pleasant tree covered country roads that begged further exploration. We've rarely explored either of these areas. We found ourselves pondering how many other roads or notable destinations might be much closer to home than we imagined. Sometimes one doesn't need to travel far away to come across something entirely new ...
We ended up heading down into Southern Maryland for what turned out to be a gorgeous day of riding all the way down to Point Lookout, the Southernmost point in the state of Maryland. As evening approached. we were presented with one of the most dramatic sunsets we've seen in quite a while. The photos we attempted just don't do it justice. 248 miles