Sunday, September 02, 2007

Wheelersburg, OH to Flatwoods, WV

Day 2 - 230 miles through Ohio and West Virginia

First order of the day was gas and food. There were not many choices for the food so we ended up stopping at Wendy’s. It was almost 11AM by the time we got on our bikes and headed out of town and it was already getting hot and humid.



Mike's Tiger hidden underneath the stairs from the night before



Days Inn in Wheelersburg, OH

I would have liked to get on the road early so at the end of today we could enjoy the outdoors, since we were planning on camping tonight, but since we arrived so late last night that just wasn’t going to happen.



From Wheelersburg we took 54 to 140 which were OK roads, then we took 279 and 325, not as twisty as the KY roads 227 and 22 we did yesterday, but fun in thier own way, Mike liked 325 since it was very hilly and had a lot of blind turns



279 in Ohio

Somewhere in some town on 279

The roads were hilly with curves and hardly any traffic until we arrived at 124 that runs parallel to the Ohio River, there was some traffic here.

Following the Ohio River on 124

Mike getting the camcorder ready while we sit in construction traffic on 124

124 and the Ohio River

Gas station break on 124, the river is right behind those trees

That's West Virginia on the other side of the bridge

At some point earlier today I had developed a headache that was starting to bug me now, I was probably getting dehydrated since I wasn’t drinking enough water and I don’t deal well with hot and humid weather. It was well in to the 90’s now and I had to cool off quick. I found a McDonalds and a cold vanilla milkshake. Cooling off inside with the AC and looking over the route and at the time we needed to get to the state park, we now needed to change our route.

The direct route would be to take 33 east which I’ve been on parts of and enjoyed. I wanted to ride some new roads but all of them went a bit out of the way and I really didn’t want to set up camp in the middle of the night. So 33 it was, it’s a good road with plenty of sweepers and tight stuff.

Not the route we had originally planned, 33 to I-79 is what happened today

33 is a great road with many very tight sections, I took all the pictures of the road while riding so there are no pictures of the tight stuff since I had to concentrate on the road

I really liked the looks of Weston, WV, lots of nice architecture

The sun was really low in the sky now and Tygart Lake State Park was still quite a ways away, since the park doesn’t take reservations, we didn’t have one, leaving us open to stay anywhere. We looked at the GPS and found a state park just 15 miles from where we were at but when we arrived at the Stonewall Jackson State Park, we didn’t see any camp sites there. It was already getting dark and who knows how long it was going to take us to find the camp sites if they had any, with no more sun light to enjoy the camping experience, we headed for I-79 to find us a cheap motel.

A bridge in Burnsville, WV

Around Burnsville there was a billboard advertising such a place, motel 79, but when we arrived there the rooms cost a bit more because of the holiday weekend and the place didn’t look that great. We headed back to the interstate and took the Flatwoods exit. I’ve actually stayed here before a couple of years ago so knew of one place, but we found an ever better place so we grabbed a room at the Sutton Lane Motel.

It was completely dark now, happy with a cheap (around $60) and decent motel room, we got out of our gear and walked down the restaurant that was adjacent to the motel. Even though the sign said it was open 24 hours, the place was decent, with good food and even better prices.

At the Waffle Hut, I had a really nice chicken dinner

Mike's dinner was a huge breakfast

Many plates of food and he finished it all

The motel was up on a hill, we had a balcony and a beautify view of the interstate and the restaurant and gas station below.

A view from our balcony at the Sutton Lane Motel

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