Skyline Drive MD/VA/WV three day roadtrip

thanks for sharing!

jimmy

our back yard!

Good RR Doug. Looks like you had a good time. I can't believe you had the go pro mounted so high! That must've made for some serious wind resistance. That's the main reason why I decided to mount mine in front of my helmet near the chin area.

You should definitely check out BRP next time. LEO presence is much lower than Skyline too. It seems like endless mile after mile of twisties, a good mix of tight stuff and sweepers. You'll wish you were on your trackbike..

Thanks for checking it out Song..and thanks for the bump in my sales thread.

Yeah, anything over 50 MPH was pushing my head backwards. The downfall of having too many helmets is not knowing which one I will want to use for the trips and make it a dedicated gopro helmet.

I was happy enough on my SV1K. Getting some of my Mojo back on the Catskills trip....it made this trip that much more fun. It was just Jeff and I, and we had to get back on these bikes, so we both took easy and only went to a certain point. Really wish I had taken more pics and did an RR for the Catskils trip.

On the good side, I got an indirect OK to do more trips....Tracey got me a Jetboil Back Country Set up...for Christmas.



I see more camping/riding trips in my future.

Enjoyed reading your report. I think I'll do a simular run this summer.

Thanks...glad you liked it. We may make it a four day trip next year and get in some of the BRP.

thats a TALL tail bag:eek1

Thx for the RR. Definitely try out the BRP next time.

It worked out really well though. I have some Chase Harper saddle bags, but did not want to bring them if I did not need to. I was able to pack my toiletries, netbook, camera stuff, and some misc gear, etc, in the JC Whitney trunk. In the Wolfman dry bag, held all my clothes and layers....which worked out well. Since we were eating on the road and staying in hotels for the two nights, I did not need to have a lot of stuff.

I did a camping and riding trip with some buddies in August, and the one thing we were trying to do was not spend any money for anyything other than gas..so that made for a highly loaded down bike....with all the camping gear and food and cooking stuff.....the bike was very heavy and bulky.

These two attached pics were from that trip. I had the great idea to bring my Hydrapak. It was hot and I wanted to have water while riding. BUT, It was too bulky,actually hitting the trunk and not letting me move at all, so when I met my riding buddies, I moved my gear around. The first pic is before moving things around, and the second after. Seeing these, you can see why I liked the set up for this ride more.

seems you can only attach one at a time.

Nice RR!
I live just outside Front Royal. Deans steak house used to be a good place to eat but management changed and so on....
Like BOBaloo22 said, Skyline drive can get real crowded on peak leaf color weekends. The traffic trying to get on the drive will back up past the motel you stayed at quite often.

My buddy from the trip, Jeff, had taken all of the Gopro shots and merged them into a movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgmepxYFxh4

Enjoy. ( I also merged this onto page 1)

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lgmepxYFxh4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lgmepxYFxh4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Gorman is about 35 minutes east of me, next time you are here make the trip across US 50. Lots of twisty road there.

Oh, OK, good to know. Thanks.

Tell me more about Elkin, WV. Every spring we take a trip down thru West Virgina and twice we stopped in Elkins, we stayed at a nice hotel (I can't remember the name, but the only restaurant in walking distance is an all you can eat buffet that doesn't serve beer. Are there any hotels in town that are near better bars/restaurants? I felt like we were on the edge of town, but I'm not sure.

If you were down near Wal mart and all that, you were on the south edge of town. Better places in town. Also lots of other things to see in the area, Thomas and Davis area is great.
Many great roads to ride and drive there too.

http://www.elkinswv.com/

Thanks for the WV link. I knew there had to be more to Elkins. See you in May.

I might have to think of another location to ride to. I don't want to get in to all kinds of traffic on a 2 laner you can't pass on. I was going to leave Harrisburg, PA area on July 4 and ride down Skyline. If traffic is that bad we won't be able to get to destination for the night. I was thinking it would be the bottom of Skyline to camp somewhere for the night. Everyone should be gone for the week maybe?

I don't think you want to go anywhere near that road on July 4th weekend. You could probably travel it just as fast on a bicycle as a motorcycle.

Skyline Drive is beautiful but the heavy traffic sort of kills it for me. I much prefer the Blue Ridge Parkway from I-64 south toward Roanoke, though it is speed limited as well.

If you don't mind going a bit farther to hit the twisty bits, there are fantastic roads in the Alleghany Highlands region a bit south of where you ended up. 250 marks the very extreme north end of that area.


Great RR, by the way! Keep it up! Looking forward to your next adventure...