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Winchester KY – Wilkes-Barre PA
Sat Oct 12, 2024
(~665 miles)

Our second day traveling home was a fantastic tour through the Ohio River Valley region and parts heretofore unseen. Char hadn’t been through Kentucky at all before yesterday, so I was happy to see that the smaller roads I’d picked leading up towards the state’s northern border were lined with horse fences and scenic pastures. She also got to experience riding along the majestic Ohio River itself. We had our first taste of southern Ohio’s vaunted rolling country roads as well as a wicked fun stretch through West Virginia across the Allegheny hills. As another long travel day, we finished with a mad dash up the interstate to get halfway across Pennsylvania to put us in a good position for a shorter final scoot home.

We had a light breakfast with coffee at the hotel, still stuffed from last night’s delicious Tex-Mex, and were rolling by 07:30. To avoid getting back on the interstate, I’d routed us through downtown Winchester. The traffic was non-existent on this beautiful morning, allowing us time to loop a couple blocks for a quick sight-see. The small city has a neatly kept downtown area with a classic courthouse and plenty of interesting historic architecture.

After a quick spin around the center and filling up the tank at an open quick mart, we headed north out of town on route 627. We crossed over I-64 and quickly left the urban density behind, embarking on a scenic morning jaunt through the northern Kentucky countryside.

Route 57 was a picturesque gem — narrow and winding country lane through horse farms and stands of medium height trees. Working our way to the northeast, we passed through the small village of North Middletown but saw very few cars along this stretch, enjoying the morning curves and scenery mostly by ourselves. In Sharpsburg, we picked up the larger, but still rural KY 11, shortly overtaking an Amish buggy hoofing it smartly up the shoulder.

Making our way up and around Flemingsburg for a good 40 miles to Maysville, we rode past vast green fields with rows of white posts. We’ve seen all sorts of agricultural fields in our travels, but this was a new one and reminded me vaguely of the white marker poles used to mark natural gas pipelines. We figured maybe very young grapevines, but later research unveiled these to be chestnut tree saplings! I guess there is a market to bring back the American chestnut after a blight began wiping them out in the past couple centuries.

Maysville lies on the banks of the Ohio River, across from Aberdeen, Ohio, and is connected to it via the Kenton Memorial suspension bridge. Here, we made our second crossing of that mighty river during this homeward leg, with one more to come. Still only about 09:00, a nice mist lay rising from the smooth-rolling water in the bright morning sunshine as we crossed state lines.

After a few pretty miles on US 52 along the north bank of the river, we turned north in Manchester to begin our long cut away from the state line, across southern Ohio. Shortly hitting route 41, we went through the busy little town of West Union on our way up to OH 32 near Peebles.

I’d never been through this part of rural Ohio before, and was surprised to find that route 32 is a wide and fast divided four lane highway! Sticking with that for some 90 miles, it avoids most towns and even had some nicely maintained rest areas, at one of which we paused for a nature/stretch break. It was a great route to make some miles this morning while still enjoying the natural scenery of the rural Midwest.

In Athens, we picked up OH 550, which I’d purposefully added in to the route so as to get a taste of some of the stellar motorcycling I’d heard about in southeast Ohio. It was a fun and curvy change from the blast on 32, affording us a closer peek at the countryside and smaller hamlets, plus  a run alongside a section of Wayne State Forest. The road surface seemed bumpier than the smooth pavement of Arkansas we’d been enjoying for several days.

Amesville was a busy little village today due to a farmer’s market and craft fair happening along the main drag where 550 goes straight through. We fueled up there since we were slowed down for the many pedestrians crossing the road anyway.

Nice quick curvy riding by farmlands and wooded pastures continued as we shot east over to the city of Marietta, on the banks of the Ohio River once again. I’ve been very curious to see Marietta since it serves as a home base for one of the New England Riders motorcycle trips. We were in and through it pretty quickly, but Char managed to squeeze off several shots of the buildings and small-town feel of this historic little city. It’s on my short-list to come back here for a few days, to enjoy the river town feel and great riding nearby.

We picked up OH 7 east here in town, following the bends and curves of the big river for many miles. I’d ridden part of this section before on other trips and wanted to give Char a bit more time to experience riding along the beautiful and scenic Ohio. It did not disappoint.

Route 7 crosses the river into New Martinsville, West Virginia, maintaining it’s number designation as it continues many more miles east, traversing through the Allegheny Mountains. It’s certainly not the windiest road in the area, but as a major thoroughfare would allow us to cover the necessary distance quickly while keeping to the woods. And it is quite a lot of fun at speed!

After the river crossing, Garmin immediately took us on a shortcut up into the hills, following a couple of county roads in a more direct path east, to join route 7 again in a few miles. While we’d intended to stay on the latter, this unexpected little side-trip, especially on Limestone Ridge Road, turned out to be a fantastic (and PAVED for once!) detour as it led us up and over an exposed lovely ridgeline via lanes too narrow for road paint.

This kind of road makes me happy to be riding! We rode it with big grins and getting more photos per mile than likely anywhere else on the trip! We linked back up with route 7, sure enough, and even this turned out to be a spectacular riding road across the northern reaches of West Virginia. Lots of curves and pretty creek-side scenery as we wound east through the Allegheny hills, with small farms and grazing pastures tucked into every valley and holler.

With just a brief stretch and snack break around 14:30 in Blacksville along the PA border, we soon finished out the remaining miles of curvy small roads for this trip. Coming down into Morgantown, we picked up the interstate system for the remainder of the day. We jogged south around the city via I-79 and then I-68 for the haul east into and across Maryland. This is an enjoyable scenic ride for an interstate, and the fall colors continued to glimmer on nearby hills in the afternoon sun. It felt good to finally put my feet up on the pegs and set the cruise control, after the past couple hours leaning the curves.

Aside from a quick fuel stop in Grantsville, we finished out the stretch to Hagerstown without delay, and took I-81 up into Pennsylvania. There was a nice sunset crossing of the Susquehanna (is this river EVER not beautiful?) before we pulled in our hotel in Wilkes-Barre around 19:30.

Having ridden sunrise to sunset without a proper meal stop, we ordered some pizza delivered from The Grotto, my go-to spot when staying in WB. I had my eye on the weather radar while we waited, as there was a front due to come through around mid-morning. Even though we only had a few hours of riding left to get home, we decided to wake early and check conditions to see if we’d have time to break out onto the road and stay ahead of that weather system.

More photos from today’s ride.