2012 Trip "Out West" - Sat, Day 1 (Home to Athens, OH)

Well, it is time to catch up on my blog for this trip. The time in the evenings just flies by between cleaning/maintaining my bike, planning for the next day, eating, etc.

The first day I left home and hit light rain within a mile of the house! My positive thoughts were "well this will get the rain out of the way for the rest of the trip"!! Hey, so far, that has been the case! I headed toward Winchester, VA to take US 50 west. I wanted to travel as much of US 50 as possible and practical since it took me all the way to Colorado. Actually US 50 goes all the way to West Sacramento, California, but I wouldn't be going that far on this trip!! The rain/drizzle continued until around Romney, WV. Never enough rain to brother putting on the rainsuit, but enough to wet my windshield and riding glasses! The scenery across the mountains of West Virginia wasn't much because of the weather. A famous place is Saddle Mountain and it was so foggy that I couldn't see much more than about 50 feet ahead of me on top of the mountain! This is all "rugged" terrain in the mountains of WV anyway, especially with towns named like Mount Storm!! US 50 is a great motorcycle road there, but it is better on a sunny dry day, for sure!!

I did stop at an interesting place near Rowlesburg, WV called Cool Springs Park. The place has been there on US 50 since 1929!! You could buy about anything in the store. I am sure there is a lot of stories and traveler history in that place. I used the restroom and bought gas and headed on west.

I made it 419 miles for the day and ended up in Athens, Ohio. Seemed like a nice little college town. Found a nice motel that I could park in front of my door and it was right on US 50 west of town so I would be ready to head on west the next morning. First thing I had to do was wash my motorcycle. The motel owner was very nice and told me to hook up his garden hose and go to it in the parking lot. He gave me a bunch of cleaning towels to use too. So that is what I did! This was the first time I had ridden my new 2012 Limited in the rain and it was very dirty. After about an hour of hosing and wiping down, it looked as good as new again and ready for the westward trip. I really hated getting it dirty for the first time, but hey, now it will be easier (don't know about that!!) The weather forecast looked great for the next day so I wanted a bike to look as good as the weather!!