Canaan Valley Motorcycle Trip

I am a couple of weeks late in posting this, but nursery preparations were in full swing! My old friend from college, Joe, came down from New Jersey for a weekend of camping and motorcycle riding. That would be Joe's beautiful Harley in the foreground. The more egalitarian Suzuki in the back would be mine.



Using Camp May as home base, I planned out a big figure-eight route to take us up and down the mountains of the Allegheny front. This is really some of the best motorcycling country on the east coast. Beautiful scenery, smooth winding mountain roads, and little traffic made for a great day of riding. The map above is the planned route (click itfor the full size version). We generally followed this route, with a few diversions that added on another 50 miles or so. The western extent of the route is up the Canaan Valley, so I took to calling it the "Canaan Valley Loop." For the next big trip, I would like to alter the route south, going through the Spruce Knob area and spending more time in the Monongahela Forest.



We stopped at Seneca Rocks for lunch. Those are the rocks behind us. There is a great little cafe on the second floor of a general store. They have balcony seating with a view of the rocks. The general store is the same one where Lizz and I waited several hours for a tow truck after being run off the road during an ice storm. Joe and I rode the bikes around the same hairpin turn where Lizz and I went off the road. There is now a guard rail on that turn. I feel there should at least be a plaque dedicating it to us.



Joe stayed two nights in camp. This gave me a chance to try out the guest accommodations on someone. The guest house consists of an air mattress in the bed of my truck, and an adjoining, connected SUV tent to add some living space. Joe reports that the setup was very comfortable for sleeping. He expected to be curled up on our camper's tiny dinette, so maybe it was just the relative luxury that appealed to him.