Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Hi again:
Another interesting day. Today’s plan was this…... get up early, have a nice breakfast at a diner next door and go to Luray Caverns. We would take the 1 hour tour, come back pack the bike and leave for parts unknown. A nice ride on the Skyline drive through the Shenandoah would be nice. Sounds good? Well this is what actually happened, Mother Nature had other plans! We are getting the bike packed when we feel "a lot of moisture in the air" and a few rain drops. We realized our planned cavern tour wasn't going to work. So we looked at the Weather station on the TV and saw that the rain was over a very large area, it was half way across North Carolina. So we quickly packed, got on the bike and took off. Instead of boogieing down the Skyline drive where we would have gotten drenched with no place to get out of the rain we headed west directly to I-81. This route kept us out of the rain all the way to Wytheville,Va. We made it almost to Tennessee before we got dumped on. It started to rain very hard. I tried to stop under a overpass but the road grade was too steep. So we proceeded on and quickly we got off 81 and headed to a gas station that had large covering over the pumps. The rain and wind intensity increased so much that we were soon out of protection. We then noticed an empty small automatic pull through car wash in back of the gas/convenience store.
We quickly relocated to the covered automatic car wash. I didn’t think it would be in use during a rain storm; I was right. Before leaving New jersey I subscribed to weather radar and reports for use on my cell phone. It will now turn out to be so handy. Using the cell phone we could see the weather info and determined that the storm cell was overhead and moving away fast. We waited for about 1/2 hour for the storm to pass.
Back on the road (Rt 81) and on to Bristol, Tennessee where we felt a couple of rain drops again. We pulled off and found a very nice clean Best Western in Kingsport and decided to call it home for the night. It is supposed to rain hard tonight. The front desk man helped Carol and I to get the bike up on the motel sidewalk and under a large overhang for the night. Everyone were so helpful and friendly. The next morning we will find it very difficult to get the bike down and off the elevated sidewalk. The manager also recommended a good Italian restaurant next door who gives a discount to Best Western customers. Good deal we thought and off we went. We had a “great” Italian meal along with a very nice waitress. So the day ends, more adventures tomorrow, and it looks like more rain for the next two days.
More tales from the road tomorrow,
Chriss and Carol
Another interesting day. Today’s plan was this…... get up early, have a nice breakfast at a diner next door and go to Luray Caverns. We would take the 1 hour tour, come back pack the bike and leave for parts unknown. A nice ride on the Skyline drive through the Shenandoah would be nice. Sounds good? Well this is what actually happened, Mother Nature had other plans! We are getting the bike packed when we feel "a lot of moisture in the air" and a few rain drops. We realized our planned cavern tour wasn't going to work. So we looked at the Weather station on the TV and saw that the rain was over a very large area, it was half way across North Carolina. So we quickly packed, got on the bike and took off. Instead of boogieing down the Skyline drive where we would have gotten drenched with no place to get out of the rain we headed west directly to I-81. This route kept us out of the rain all the way to Wytheville,Va. We made it almost to Tennessee before we got dumped on. It started to rain very hard. I tried to stop under a overpass but the road grade was too steep. So we proceeded on and quickly we got off 81 and headed to a gas station that had large covering over the pumps. The rain and wind intensity increased so much that we were soon out of protection. We then noticed an empty small automatic pull through car wash in back of the gas/convenience store.
We quickly relocated to the covered automatic car wash. I didn’t think it would be in use during a rain storm; I was right. Before leaving New jersey I subscribed to weather radar and reports for use on my cell phone. It will now turn out to be so handy. Using the cell phone we could see the weather info and determined that the storm cell was overhead and moving away fast. We waited for about 1/2 hour for the storm to pass.
Back on the road (Rt 81) and on to Bristol, Tennessee where we felt a couple of rain drops again. We pulled off and found a very nice clean Best Western in Kingsport and decided to call it home for the night. It is supposed to rain hard tonight. The front desk man helped Carol and I to get the bike up on the motel sidewalk and under a large overhang for the night. Everyone were so helpful and friendly. The next morning we will find it very difficult to get the bike down and off the elevated sidewalk. The manager also recommended a good Italian restaurant next door who gives a discount to Best Western customers. Good deal we thought and off we went. We had a “great” Italian meal along with a very nice waitress. So the day ends, more adventures tomorrow, and it looks like more rain for the next two days.
More tales from the road tomorrow,
Chriss and Carol
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