Isle of Palms SC – Wilkesboro NC
Fri Oct 20, 2023
(~423 miles)

Being a bit queasy from last night’s meat overload, I settled for a banana and two cups of coffee from the lobby this morning, before our departure around 07:20. We wanted an early start through the crowded suburbs, and the pre-dawn coastal sky  looked magical this morning — a planet beaming through the indigo stratosphere and a stripe of wispy clouds dotted above the cerulean horizon by nature’s paintbrush.

We’ll be exploring more rural roads through the Carolinas today, heading towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our dinner destination is in Boone NC, at a local pizza joint called Capone’s. We’d ordered delivery from our Blowing Rock hotel on a cold rainy night during our first long-distance bike trip several years ago. To this day, I salivate at the memory of their delicious garlic knots that we’d ordered as an afterthought! I’ve been on the lookout for good garlic knots since that trip and have never found any as good. So we are headed back there to see if the reality is as tasty as our recollection. Some pretty riding with more curves and autumn color at the higher elevations won’t hurt either.

After crossing the ICW for the last time back into Mt. Pleasant, we zigzagged via US 17 over to SC 14, heading north over the Wando River and diving straight into the Francis Marion National Forest. Evergreens formed a narrow alley around us for the next 20 miles or so, cruising unimpeded through the forest in the chill morning air. No towns or stoplights, just long straight sections through the greenery.

We pulled in for a quick nature break in the small crossroads community of Jamestown just before crossing the Santee River to leave the national forest. The lower temperature today had surprised us a bit as well so a slight change of layers was necessary for comfort. Welcome back to fall!

Some 60 miles of route 41 passed under our wheels as we cruised through the rural South Carolina countryside, passing several small towns and cotton fields still speckled in white, awaiting harvest. We veered off on SC 9 in Gresham and picked up US 501 to SC 38, finally crossing back through the I-95 corridor into the piedmont.

Bennettsville, which is the Marlborough County seat, was the first town of any real size that I chose to route through, arriving just after 10:00. I’d picked out a bakery/coffee shop here called Brew & Bake, correctly thinking we’d be ready for a late morning break and a bite to eat by now. It’s a small café, sharing a building with a couple other businesses, none of which seemed to be open at the moment. It seemed pretty quiet in this stretch of town, being past the morning rush.

I had them grill me up a breakfast sandwich on a croissant which was just OK, while Char had avocado toast sprinkled with an everything spice that she really enjoyed. I couldn’t resist one of their apple fritters heated up, and boy was that thing full of grease! I could feel my heart slowing momentarily while I et it. 😋 Delicious, but sooo heavy and rich, not quite like anything I’ve tasted.

They had no on-site seating whatsoever, so we found a spot to sit in the sun around the side of the building on a small retaining wall. Also, no public bathrooms, so the nearby woods served the purpose for quick relief after we ate. Ahh, parking lot breakfast on the road!

The half hour off the bike, coffee and vittles did us well, and we shortly continued north out of town on 38, crossing the state line into North Carolina just a few miles up the road.  The skies gradually began to cloud up with an accompanying drop in temperature as we made our way north and west over the course of the afternoon. The area around Hamlet and Rockingham looks pretty busy on the map, so we glided around it via US 74. We also hooked around Rockingham and picked our way north on rural Cartledge Creek Road, an isolated 20+ scenic paved ribbon through the woodsy countryside.

That becomes Pekin Road just before diving straight into the Uwharre National Forest. Mostly a tunnel of trees on good pavement with some touches of autumn color and a few bands of light rain.  We made a quick stop in Troy for fuel, then continued on NC 109, completing a run of entire length of the forest south to north.

The town of Denton was the next community of any size we passed through. Char was feeling the chill again in the gloomier weather, and not in the mod to take photos on the fly with cold hands. I pulled a u-ey to get a couple shots of a cool old Esso station in the middle of town, with a bunch of vintage autos parked around the lot.

From Denton, we followed NC 47 northwest, skimming below the city of Lexington and crossing I-85 between it and Salisbury. Looped up via local roads and NC 150 to US 64 so we could cross the Yadkin River and make more miles in a westerly direction. After crossing I-40, we peeled off on NC 901 to continue drifting north and had a stretch and warm-up stop in the small town of Harmony, at a war memorial with stone benches. Char layered up a bit more, as the cloud cover, occasional sprinkles, and falling temperature were again making her chilly without that heated gear.

Soon crossing I-77, we proceeded due west into a wide swath of rural North Carolina countryside, following a series of curvy farm roads that I’d stitched together using Basecamp and Google Maps – Linneys Mill Rd, Sulphur Springs Rd, Vashti Rd – to keep us moving more or less in the correct direction and to the next numbered route, NC 16. We took that north to Wilkesboro, with plenty of dark and gloomy rain clouds dominating the mountainous horizon to our west.

Yes, mountains! Almost to the end of the flatlands now.

Wilkesboro would be our final destination for the evening, as all the hotels up in the Boone area seemed very overpriced. But it was only 15:00 and we had pizza and garlic knots waiting for us in them thar hills! So with a sharp turn to the southwest via NC 268, we wheeled along the Yadkin River valley, towards those ominous dark clouds swirling over the Blue Ridge. This was quite a pretty ride, lined with pastures, harvested fields, and some nice sweeping curves.

As we neared the western end of the valley, that weather finally unloaded on us and it was a doozy! Fierce chilly winds, torrential downpours, and even sheets of small hail battered us suddenly, like turning on a light switch! OK, what the hail, this is crazy! I slowed us way down and we just pushed ahead, hunkering down inside our jackets and helmets as there really wasn’t much of a shoulder nor any public property to stop at. By the time we reached US 321 and the edge of the mountainous Pisgah National Forest about 15 minutes later, blue sky was showing through breaks in the clouds and the heavy stuff had abated. I would not be surprised if told we had just ridden through a small microburst, being so localized and severe.

We ascended up the Blue Ridge now on 321, temperature dropping even as sun and rain clouds fought for dominance in the skies above. Clouds mostly winning. Getting beat up by that storm cell after a long day in the saddle, followed by these dropping temperatures, and I was feeling pretty beat.

More intermittent rain hit us as we continued up and through Blowing Rock. I was shivering, not having properly layered up, but stubbornly refusing to make any stops in the rain until we got to our destination. My discomfort was making it hard to appreciate the beautiful pockets of fall foliage we began to see up on the ridgeline. Despite being even more uncomfortable than I was, Char managed to get her wet gloves off and take a few photos.

Coming into the center of Boone, traffic grew quite heavy. We’d stayed in Blowing Rock on that past bike trip so this was the first time we’d actually been into Boone itself. It was bigger and busier than I’d expected, with the campus of Appalachian State University situated right at the junction of US highways 321 and 421, with traffic backed up for several light cycles. Figures — Friday rush hour during foliage season. And of course, it began to rain harder as we waited helplessly at the traffic light, feeling miserable.

On top of that, we then turned the wrong way (west) because my waypoint for the restaurant was (I later discovered) set to their previous address on King Street. After a frustrating 15 minutes wandering around the main business district in the rain, even venturing onto some steep residential side streets in search of some parking, we finally punched it into Google Maps (in between rain drops hitting the screen) and realized we were still over a mile away from their new location, back through the busy intersection. 😩 Finally, picking our way back through the traffic, we pulled into a large shopping plaza with plenty of lot parking, right in front of Capone’s Untouchable Pizza. We felt like cold drowned rats and could not wait to get some hot pizza into our bellies!

We tromped in dripping, keeping our jackets, gloves, and helmets with us to hopefully dry out a bit while we dined. The place is big and spacious and not too busy yet at 16:45 on a rainy Friday afternoon. The process here was a bit unfamiliar: we were invited to sit anywhere, review the menu, and then come back to the counter to order while providing the table number, as the food would be brought out to us when ready. Stripping off that wet gear at the table was such a relief. I was very sad that my seven year old Klim jacket no longer seems to be keeping out all the leaks, as my base layer was very damp across the shoulders and chest. It took us quite a while to warm up.

The garlic knots arrived first, hot and fresh. They were every bit as decadent and delicious as I remembered. The dough is delightful and cooked with a nice light crust while airy inside, all coated with the zingy rich garlic butter sauce. Yowza!

Our deep dish veggie pizza was very good as well, though maybe a bit too sparse with the toppings. Whatever, it was great to have some hot food to warm us from the inside out, washed down by root beer or iced tea. After eating our fill, I went out to the bike to retrieve a couple ziploc bags for our leftovers – no way this deliciousness was going to waste! We hung out for a while afterwards, continued to try warming up with some hot tea as the restaurant slowly filled up with the dinnertime crowd.

We left around a quarter past six, after a good 1.5 hour meal break, feeling stuffed and much better than we had on arrival. US 421 is a nice quick road once out of town, becoming divided for most of the eastbound descent down to Wilkesboro, except while crossing back over the Blue Ridge though Deep Gap. We seemed to be mostly behind the storm front now, avoiding any more direct rain, though the roads were wet and mist hung in the evening air.

We reached our night’s lodging at the Day’s Inn in Wilkesboro before 19:00, a large motel style establishment with outside doors for every room. We scored a first floor room and tiredly hauled our stuff inside while making some small talk with a truck driver smoking outside his room nearby with his little dog companion who barked at us until the engine was off, when he became our best friend. There were several other motorcycles in the lot as well, so must be a popular home base for exploring the nearby riding opportunities.

The price was right and the room was clean enough, if basic, so I’d have no issues staying here again on a future excursion. We cranked the heat, cleaned up, and got under the covers to warm up as quickly as possible. Tomorrow looked to be another cooler riding day, but the forecast was looking clear and sunny for our morning run along the Blue Ridge Mountains.