This entry is for Wednesday, 25 May 2011:
Today's ride was 370 miles from Middlesboro, KY to Athens, OH. We left our hotel in the morning after overnight thunderstorms in a thick fog, expecting to encounter some rain during the day. What we ended up experiencing was wet roads in the early morning, followed by fog burn off and dry roads from late morning on. The route taken was a northerly route through the Boone National Forest. Lots of mountain road riding with hills and sharp turns. The specific routes were 25E, 119, 421, 66, 11, 77, 460 into the town of West Liberty, KY, then 7 to Grayson, KY. In the morning we travel through some coal mining towns and also encountered two interesting road features. One was rock overhung roadways and the other was a single lane, unlined, rock tunnel with no traffic signals at either portal. Must be interesting if two vehicle meet in the tunnel! Fortunately, this did not happen to us.
While in West Liberty, we stopped for some home cooking at Pattie's Place. Gerry and I both had the lunch special which was pork loin, spare ribs, potatoes and green beans. After we ordered our food, a hunched over elderly gentleman in his late 70s to early 80s arrived at the restaurant. On his way in he exchanged pleasantries with us. Pattie yells into the kitchen that "Merle" is here seeing this fellow enter her restaurant and sit down at "his" table. Pattie the proceeds to tell us that Merle has eaten the same lunch at her restaurant for the last 23 years every day,except the two days per year she is not open. What did he have you wonder? He has had 2 pieces of fried chicken, 2 eggs, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a coffee every day for the last 23 years! To me, Merle is the definition of a regular customer.
While at Pattie's Place, we also tried the butterscotch pie. It was good and a first for me. Just what I need is another thing that I really like that has a ton of calories in it!
The whole meal experience was negatively impacted by patrons in the restaurant who were smoking. Smoking in restaurants was prevalent in TN and KY, for all the local restaurants.
Saw lots more single wide homes throughout our route. I took another photo of a single wide that had a dozen abandoned vehicles in the yard around and have posted this along with some other shots along the route.
We arrived at Grayson earlier than we expected and decided to extend our ride to Parkersburg, WV as a destination, adding on about another 100 miles. From Grayson we took I-64 east for about 50 miles and then went north along Rt. 7 which parallels the Ohio River over some of this stretch of road. When we got to Parkersburg we tried to make a hotel reservation only to be told repeatedly - no vacancy. It appears that there was a softball tournament going on and all the hotels were booked up. So we got a hotel in Athens, OH, about 25 miles west of Parkersburg for the evening. And there you have the why we ended up in Athens. By the way...Athens is the home of Ohio University...not be be confused with The Ohio State University which is located in Columbus.
Tomorrow, Gerry and I will be heading in different directions to return to our respective homes on opposite coasts. Gerry will be heading back to California flying out of Cincinnati and shipping his bike back to CA from Cinci. I, of course, will be heading back towards Massachusetts tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment