Southeast MA – Brunswick MD
Sat Oct 14, 2023
(~525 miles)

When my team at work settled on Charleston, South Carolina as the location for our annual in-person meeting, I was exited for the opportunity to experience a new-to-me city. Not being a fan of unnecessary air travel these days, I immediately began hatching a plan to ride down by motorcycle. A serendipitous (and partially subsidized) way to get one last long trip in for the year. Better yet, Char was eager to join me, breaking away from the normal routine for a week, and working from the road for a couple of days while I attended my work meetings. It will allow us to test taking a joint “work-cation”, finding room on the bike for three laptops and everything we’d need for a week. We’d be able to see a few sights and just enjoy a few days riding there and back together.

I wanted to avoid the same old interstate routes this trip and explore some new roads. Since we’ll both be working part of the week, time is a factor that must be considered. So it couldn’t be all back roads, but how about following some of the east’s “blue highways”? As I pored over the digital maps, I honed in on the north-south US 15 corridor, which neatly bifurcates the gap between I-81 and I-95. It s a semi-major highway that run down through the central regions and towns of Virginia and North Carolina. So far, I’d had no occasion to poke through here on the motorcycle so this trip will be a true tour through new places!

A friend from Virginia confirmed we should be able to make fairly good time, and I spent several hours of spare time over the late summer and early fall planning our route LOOSELY around US 15, to avoid town centers and big cities and explore the odd local road here and there where it made sense.

Weather-wise, there was a big swirly storm system coming east across the Midwest the day before departure, so we’d be starting off in the wet. The forecast looked pretty great after that, so we focused on the positive and adjusted our attitudes to be mentally prepared for a tiring first day. With the intent to ride mostly secondary highways after escaping New England and to stop for meals, it was going to be a long day in the saddle.

 

Alarm was set for 03:00 and it was 45F at our time of departure at 04:15. At the local gas station, I asked Char if she had remembered to pack her heated liner. When she said no, I just looked at her, sighed, then asked if we should go back to the house a few miles away to retrieve it.

“No I’ll be fine.”

Now it had been a few months since she had ridden long miles in temperatures under 60 degrees and besides that, Char is not an early morning person. Maybe not thinking ahead too clearly at the moment? I should have just ridden back to get her gear, regardless. But I was also foggy-headed, we were already “late” in getting out of the area, and we both were still feeling warm enough at the moment from getting underway this morning. So…OK fine, no heated gear for you then! A decision she (and therefore I) would regret greatly over the course of this trip!

It only took riding about halfway across Connecticut for Char to remember the effects of wind chill on the slab. Although uncomfortable, she’s a tough cookie and didn’t complain about it unless asked. She donned extra socks at one stop to warm her feet up and that seemed to help for a while at least.

We expected fairly clear riding until New Jersey & Pennsylvania, and that’s what we got. After crossing the Hudson via the Cuomo bridge on I-287, we took I-87 north one exit to 17 so we could cross into Jersey through Ringwood State Park. The mid-autumn colors were a bit muted under the gloomy skies but still very pretty riding.

As we pulled off the road into the driveway for Ringwood Manor to find a restroom, rain finally began to patter down and would continue to hound us for the remainder of the day’s ride. After a quick stop, we gritted our teeth, pulled on our gloves over wet hands, and hit the road, turning a bit northwest to parallel the state border over to West Milford. We turned south on Clinton Road to enjoy more fall color and rain for several miles through Wawayanda State Park down to NJ 23. We fueled up, jogged a quarter mile west and hopped on a series of local roads through Oak Ridge and Jefferson Township over into Ogdensburg.

The roads were nice and curvy, especially Edison Road, but the rain-slicked pavement kept our velocity contained. Scenic Heaters Pond in Ogdensburg has a well-kept town park with a beach and we had the place to ourselves (given the weather) to stop for a stretch and a few photos of the foliage while the rain continued to patter down on us.

Crossing CR 517, we wandered further west into Lafayette on farm roads. Soon, we found our way to today’s intended breakfast stop, the Marketplace at Wesselhof Farms, which was a random online find while searching along our intended route. It turned out to be a great choice for breakfast on a chilly wet morning, and we were thankful for the opportunity to get a break off the bike with hot food and coffee.

Wesselhof is a family-owned farm that includes a market/restaurant building on site. The inside is spacious and clean, with concrete floors, which worked out great for us to shed our dripping jackets, helmets and gloves at a table before heading up to get food. While not crowded, there was a bit of a line at the register, as it seems a popular place for the locals to stop in for some good coffee drinks in the middle of nowhere. Waiting gave us time to inspect the wonderful showcase of delicious-looking baked goods before ordering our coffee and meals. I added an apple crostata for dessert, which looks more or less like a deep-dish pie or tart. I felt it imperative to get an early start on my pie quota for this vacation!

The service was friendly, coffee nice and hot, and the food was great! That crostata was amazing….oh boy!

We were off the bike about an hour before it was time to get back to it. Char was feeling warmer now and was likely to stay that way longer, at back road speeds and with breakfast inside us. But with the chill and rain, and the difficulty of removing/donning her gloves, we ended up with a lot fewer photos from the pillion seat today. Her focus was to keep as dry and comfortable as possible within her gear.

Keeping to the route I’d stitched together, including a couple New Jersey BONE roads, we motored on, picking up CR 519 south of Newton, and following it many miles through rural western New Jersey down to I-78 in Pohatcong near the border. We crossed quickly into Pennsylvania and stuck to the slab another 20 miles or so through the greater Allentown area to Upper Saucon Township, where we exited to pick up the fun segment of local roads I’ve been using for trips to and from Yoder’s Restaurant in New Holland.

We got as far as Amity PA and the rain had been pelting us steadily for a while. Even our Gore-tex gear couldn’t quite keep up with the incessant deluge and dampness was creeping in through the seams. We needed a sanity stop to warm ourselves up and pulled in to a Dunkin Donuts, parking in the rain and wearing all our gear inside to try to dry it out at least a little bit. Unfortunately, nobody here had gotten the memo on the chilly temperatures outside, so the AC was running full blast. Still, at least we could be dry for a bit, and we got some hot tea to warm our insides for an hour or so. Since I was still benefiting from my heated jacket liner, Char added my extra fleece top to her layers to alleviate the chills, which seemed to help.

Soggily, we mounted the wet bike in the non-stop rain and continued south through French Creek State Park and some of the surrounding gamelands, then west through Caernarvon onto PA 23. There were some pauses in the rain now and then, which helped raise our morale. Breaking with my known route now, we peeled off south through Narvon and Salisbury to pick up PA 340 for a few miles west. Then south again to hit US 30 in East Lampeter where we pulled in to our very late lunch destination around 15:00.

Miller’s Smorgasbord is another Pennsylvania Dutch-style buffet establishment, similar to Yoder’s (which I’d also considered for our break). I’d found Miller’s via another random search, and it appears to be well-known and came highly recommended, so why not try out a different restaurant out this time while we’re passing through.

We were damp, dripping, and chilled, so the warm dining room, welcoming us with great-smelling food of all types was like heaven. We picked a table by the window, shed our wet outer layers, and hit the buffet after ordering some hot tea. We watched the weather radar while we ate and felt in absolutely no rush, hoping more of the rain would clear past us by the time we were ready to hit the road again.

The buffet here is HUGE, at least as big as Yoder’s if not bigger. Hot soup was the first dish for me and while I can’t remember exactly what it was called, it was hearty, fantastic, and really hit the spot! I followed that up with a sampler plate including some roast beef, fried chicken, baked cabbage, a wonderful ham with spiced apples dish, potatoes and sauteed kale. I even squeezed in a small piece of pumpkin pie with a cup of decaf for dessert. Char found plenty of pasta and vegetable dishes to choose from, and we both were feeling much more human by the time we packed up to go over an hour later.

The rain wasn’t quite done with us yet, but it was just off-and-on, with lots of ground-level fog along some really pretty farm roads southeast of Lancaster. This was all new riding territory for me. I’d hoped to stop by to check out the view from Pinnacle Overlook along the Susquehanna River in Martic, but the fog was just too thick now and we just wanted to make some time to our waiting and hopefully warm hotel room.

We crossed the river on PA 372 and fueled up in Peach Bottom Township for the final stretch of the day. Next up was NER BONE road PA 851 which looks like a lot of fun to ride, but the wet conditions and the long day of riding kept me from taking the curves as lively as I might otherwise have done.

From Manheim we crossed the state line into Maryland on Glenville/Wentz Road north of Manchester. We continued on back roads I’d stitched together leading southwest, generally towards Frederick, avoiding big towns like Westminster. As the sun set around 18:30 today, I was hoping to make the interstate before dark, for easier riding. Cold and wet is one thing, but adding darkness after the long hours today would just kinda suck! Through the villages of Union Bridge and Libertytown, we were thankful to hit I-70 in New Market before full darkness descended.

It was just few miles into Frederick, where we picked up US 340 to run several more west to Brunswick, on the Potomac just downstream from Harper’s Ferry. The rain had picked up again and was coming down steadily as I sought a level parking place in the sloped parking lot of the Travelodge hotel. The hotel shares property with a diner along a rural farm road outside town. Both are apparently owned/managed by the same business, so the front counter of the diner serves as the hotel office. We slopped inside the diner to check in to our room and get our keycards.

We lugged our stuff off the bike through the rain and were welcomed to a recently renovated room with a big bathtub and great heating system! We cranked that sucka to 75F and laid out all our stuff in front of the heater vent to start drying out.

I was sad to see that my seven-year old Klim Latitude Misano jacket might finally be losing some of its waterproof-ness, as a large area on my chest was pretty damp. It’s been a great jacket all these years, but maybe no longer up to a full day’s soaking at this point. My Rukka Gore-tex lobster mitts were also soaked through after full day of steady rain.

We’d arrived at 20:00 and were still pretty full from our late lunch at Millers. Having no real appetite, nor desire to venture out for food, even to the diner next door, we were done. After cleaning up we watched some Netflix and called it a night very soon after. Another long traveling day lay ahead of us, but with a much drier forecast. Char is happy to be warm and I’m excited to see some more new roads tomorrow.

More photos from today’s ride