In the Heart of Country

I stopped in at the Wild Turkey distillery on the drive down form Lexington to Nashville.  The one hour tour, actually conducted by Chris the grandson of the original, and still active master of the distillery - the person cridited with the distinctive Wild Turkey taste, was very informative.  The business was sold for about $600 million to Campari a few years ago and they've built a new modern distillery since that time.

This is one of the central corridors of one of the many warehouses where they aged the bourbon in charred oak barrels.  The oldest one is 20 years old.

After the tour I continued south in the near 39 degree heat to Nashville arriving at the Day's Inn next to the 60,000 seat football stadium where the Tennessee Titans play their home games.

After a quick shower to cool down, I took a taxi accross the river to the downtoen part of Louisiana.  There are many lively C&W clubs in different parts of the city, as I learned on the bus tour I took Thursday, and an array of different types along a 3 block stetch of Broadway and on 2nd Avenue North.  After a really good salad at the bar at Merchant's on Broadway, an establishment that's been around (probably not as an in place restaurant and bar, I went out to sample a few of the no cover charge clubs and the $1.75 beer. Well, not all places are that inexpensive; I had to pay a whole $6.00 cover to get into the famous Wildhorse Saloon on 2nd, and the beer was $4.75.  The Wildhorse is a great big place with great entertainment and (Jane, Chuck and Lynn) a large dance floor.

Thursday morning I went to Ryman Hall.  This former church in December of 1945 became the birthplace of Bluegrass and the Grand Ole Opry. 

I was able to get a ticket in the balcony to see The Boxcars, and as the main act Chris Thile and Michael Dave performing as part of The Spinger Mountain Farms Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series.  These musicians are really at the very top of their game.

The bus tour of Nashville which I took with Jane's encouragemennt, helped me discover many things I did not know about Nashville.  Otis, our driver and guide who is also a band leader, guitarist and owner of a company that does the set up for bands pointed out many of the sights of the city including the location of important studios (RCA Studio B where Elvis recorded some 300 songs), clubs where the 'stars' go to listen as well as play, and places to eat.  I had no idea how big and important the music industry was to Nashville.

After the bus tour I went into the Country Music Hall of Fame where it would be easy to spend a day or more looking over the memorabilia on display and listening to the countless music tracks on offer.  The curation is excellent and the space itself, particularly the Hall of Fame, are impressive.

This is Elvis' gold piano.

After lunch at Joe's Crab Shack, I spent a part of the afternoon walking around in the blazzing heat.  I had wanted to visit the State Capital Building but it was closed to the public for renovations.

Oh, and the very best thing about yesterday was the ruling by the U S Supreme Court upholding Obamacare.  Surprisingly there was no talk or cheering aboutr in the clubs I visited after the Bluegrass show at the Ryman.  Go figure!

Today because it's still very very hot, I plan to visit the Friist Center for the Visual Arts before heading off to a show at the new Grand Ole Opry this evening.  Watch for me on the radio; I was able to get a single ticket in the middle of the first row.  As the lady at the ticket office said: Any closer and you'd be on the stage.

End of Blue Ridge Parkway, Deal's Gap and Lexington

All right, I,ve got some catching up to do. As you can guess from the tiltle of this entry I completed the Blue Ridge Parkway, all 469 miles of it and it was worth every minute of the ride. As I've already noted the views from the easily over 1000 overviews are spectacular at any time of the day. The ranges in the distrance actually do look blue while the forests and fields on both sides of the parkway itself are of all shades of green and gold. There are stretches of the parkway that were completely lined with flowering rhododendrons.

This is one of those early morning views with the banks of fog hanging below the parkway in the distance.

The destination was Deal's Gap, a bucket list item for any serious biker. The Dragon's Tail, as this portion of route 129 that straddles the bodrder between TN and KY lives up to its billing as a must do ride: 318 curves in 11 miles; some quite nasty. The manager at the store/motel office told me that it takes an average rider around 30 minutes to complete one run. Well I guess I'm average. I rode it three times, twice yesterday after I had booked in and once on the way out this morning; and all three times my time was just under 30 minutes. I'm sure that Pierre-Alain could do it quicker on his bike, or on mine for that matter.

Here I am at the 'Resort' where I was lucky enough to rent a perfectly clean and well appointed room on short notice. They are booking rooms for next year, now! They are famous for their bike routes, but not their food. They are also far out of the way which means that there is no cell or wifi connection capability. This is a problem when one wants to let folks at home that all is well . Sorry!!

Here I am after breakfast just before leaving Deal's Gap.

The next panorama shot is of one of the many switchback curves on the Dragon's Tail.

Towards the end of the Dragon's Tail there is an overlook from which one can see a man made lake held back by a hydro dam.

Tonight I'm in Lexington KY; tomorrow it's off to Nashville to catch a bit of country.

The Bleu Ridge Parkway

The sky was clear and at 20-21 celsius along the Parkwaay the temperature was much more comfortable than in the valleys.


Wow!! The views are incredible. The Parkway runs on the crest of a range of mountains so that at different times the overlooks provide a view to the west, like the one on tthe left, and to the east.

This is a small stretch of reconstructed narrow gauge railway such as was built by lumber companies in the early 20th century to transport the lumber that was being harvested in the Blue Ridge mountains. This small section that crosses a beautiful small stream of what was a 50 mile railway is at a stop along the Parkway.

An interessting formation of rocks at one of the numerous outlooks.

Wahoo! who'd had thunk that a staple of Bonairian cuisine could be featured at a restaurant in Lynchburg VA.

I had a fantastic hamburger made from locally raised beef served on a fresh bun with grainy Dijon mustard, with fries and ice tea for lunch at Mangia. A delicious slice of home made tiramisu was included in the $8.99 lunch special.





Riding on the Parkway is a lot of fun; the pace is slow, the traffic is light and the views are ever-changing and one more breathtaking than the other.

Tonight I'm in Ronoake; tomorrow I will continue riding south on the Parkway.

Shanandoah National Park's Skyline Drive

One of the magnificent views along both sides of the 105 mile scenic roadway that follows the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the north entrance just outside of Front Royal to the southern gate just outside of Waynesboro where it connects to the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway that stretches for 469 miles to Great Smokey Mountains National Park. The plan is to do some of the Parkway tomorrow.







This is another of the many viws where I stopped to admire the scenery. There are probably 150 or so Overlooks along Skyline Drive with lots of paved surface to park one's vehicle. The traffic was light along the whole Drive. At 2,000+ feet of elevation the temperature was some 10 degrees cooler, at around 27 celsius, than its been for the last few days. There are numerous places to stop for water and even a few places where a meal in a dining room can be had. I had a nice Virginia ham on a bun sandwich for lunch while listening to a park employee give a lecture on bears to a group of young children.




As the sign says, this is the entrance to the national park.

I have a room at the Waynesboro Quality Inn.

The bike is performing very well and so tomorrow it's on to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I hope you are all enjoying the heat.

From Harrisburg PA to Winchester VA

This is the view from the terrasse at the National Cicil War Museum in Harrisburg. The Museum is extremely well done and is a great place to get an overall impression of the 1861 to 1865 Civil War. They have found way to explain the sequence of battles in each of the years and to effectively convey the different and often conflicting points of view and emotions of the time by having actors portray a number of people, including both union and confederate sympathizers and a slave and his wife. You are introduced to these characters throough a series of short clips at the beginning of the display and then you find them all again at various points during the visit which follows the chronology of the five year period. I feel that I learned a lot about the war, the main players, and the issues which dominated the battlefields and the political arena during that time.

This is a picture of the National Museum.

After a two and a half hour visit to the museum I left Harrisburg and headed south along Route 11. The sun was blazzing and the temperature reached a high of 39 degrees. I stopped for lunch at the North Hanover Grille in Carlisle just south of Harrisburg. The ice tea was good, the Philly steak sandwich not so much.

I guess because I'm riding on secondary highways, which means that I go through a number of small cities and towns with traffic lights and reduced speed limits, it feels like this trip so far is much hotter than others. I have to remind myself to stop occasionally to drink some liquids. I'm becoming addicted to the 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade (I don't care what Mayor Bloomberg says).

These are more of the day lillies that in some areas line the highway for long stretches.

I arrived at The Washington Hotel in Winchester Virginia under cloudy skies at around 6 pm and, after a shower to cool down I went out in the old part of the city for dinner.

Tomorrow I continue south towards Waynesboro and Buena Vista.

From Cortland NY to Harrissburg PA

Picking day lillies for Jane along the road!

Let me tell you now about last night's dinner in Cortland. First of all one should never ever ever eat in a restaurant called the Community Restaurant ( it's in front of the car in the picture on the left) if one doesn't know what the communities tastes are. My meal was a white on white on white affair. The special was chicken and biscuit, which I mistakingly thought would be a lighter than lite deep fried chicken dish. I was wrong. It was a white biscuit of some kind covered by a half bucket or so of bits of chicken in a white tasteless starchy gravy, served on a, yes you guessed it, a simple white plate. I thought I was back in the dining hall at Collège du Sacré Coeur in 1964. I passed on the vanilla ice cream dessert; but I did have a Saranac beer, which went well with the tomato juice I had also ordered.

At around 9:00 this morning when I was leaving the Day's Inn the sky was clear and the temperature was already 25 celsius. I figured I was in for a hot day and it turned out that I was right. As the day wore on the heat kept rising. By lunchtime it was 27 and by the time I pulled into the Howard Johnson in Harrisburg the temperature was over 29 degrees and the humidity was off the scale.

The ride south on route 13 from Cortland to Ithica was nice but not as nice as the stretch along route 14 in Pennsylvania to Williamsport. This road winds its way through a valley between lushly forested mountains and along small rivers and brooks, and the sides of the road are marked with large clumps of wild flowers and patches of beautiful orange day lillies.

Lunch at a tavern in the town of Lewisburg was a surprise. The special (I must learn to mistrust that appelation) was a chicken bruschetta. OK I thought, that should be nice; ome bits of grilled chicken on a toasted piece of bread of some kind with chunks of ripe tomatoes, onions, fresh parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, freshly ground pepper and salt; along with a small greek salad, and a glass of nice cold unsweetened ice tea. Sounds delicious I hear you say.

Well, not so much, the aforementionned chicken bruschetta was a hot pita wrap of grilled chicken and melted cheese with pieces of tomato soaked in cheap balsamic vinegar. The same tomatoes were also on the greek salad, along with finely sliced canned black olives and crumbled pasty feta cheese. And so I would not run out there were two small plastic containers of greek salad dressing.

But the ice tea was perfect! So, like a good Canadian, I left a nice tip and was on my way. After all, siiting in an air conditionned room has got to be worth something. Right?

The remainder of the drive to Harrisburg along route 147 which follows the Susquehanna River, and even the 20 mile or so detour on even smaller back roads, was very enjoyable.

After dinner at the Lancaster Brewing Company establishment next to the HoJo in Harrisburg, I'm still searching for a first really good meal. As luck has it there are still many miles to cover, so I'm confident that my patience will be rewarded.

Tomorrow I plan to visit the National Civil War Museum here in Harrisburg before heading south to Winchester Virginia. A room awaits at the George Washington Hotel.

Retirement Rides - Season 3

Hello all friends and any other curious folks out there in cyberspace.

Well, the planning, to the extent that I do any serious planning, is over; and so is the wait. Some will recall that two summers ago I went west, all the way to Victoria, then from there south to San Fransisco. Jane was with me from Calgary to Vancouver; and though she nearly froze on the stretch from Canmore to Kalowna, she didn't complain and I think actually enjoyed (note the lower case) herself. The return portion was through such places as Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, through Colorado and a bunch of mid-west states to Chicago. I raced home via Kalamazoo, the Blue Water Bridge and the 401. O K, there were a lot of other interesting bits and they are listed in earlier posts.

In Season 2, the sequel so to speak, I rode to the eastern seaboard of the USA, through the northern parts of New Hampshire and Maine and up to New Brunswick. I rode around most of Nova Scotia, including the Cabot Rail, and then went from St Johns to the western end, and up to L'Anse aux Meadows, the northwesternmost tip of Newfoundland. I returned via PEI where I picked up my favourite passenger and together we rode around the Gaspé Peninsula. We stopped in Québec City to visit Michèle's parents and came home via the 138 along the north shore of le fleuve St Laurent and the 148 to Lachute.

So, having gone west, and east, it seemed to make sense that this year I would point the windscreen of the beemer south. I left home under cloudy skies at 9:00 this morning waved off by a tearful but brave-faced Jane and I think a happy phill. I hate to think what he gets into when I'm not around. The cats for their part were both nonchalant about the whole thing; we'll see what their tune is when they realize that the double-treats guy (Guy) isn't there for a while.

I crossed the border at Prescott after a quick snack on the Canadian side and rode to the Cortland Day's Inn via a number of beautiful secondary highways. The skies cleared and the temperature steadily rose throughout the day to reach 34 C by the time I pulled into the hotel parking lot. The roads are in really good shape, I suspect as a result of the billions which the federal government has poured into infrastructure projects since 2008, and the traffic is very light. is this a consequence of the state of the US economy and relatively high price of gas?

Dinner tonight is somewhere here in Cortland; details in the next post. Tomorrow I plan to cross into Pennsylvania south of Elmira N.Y. and make my way via routes 14 and 15 to somewhere around Harrisburg; but, that could change.

I'll try to add pictures to the next blog posts.