Day: 28
Date: 29/4
City: Sparta, North Carolina
Miles ridden: 249
Cumulative miles: 1219

Today we got up earlier and met for breakfast at 8:00, then we left for the Blue Ridge parkway around 10:30.  The speed limit was 45mph, which was faster than the day before. We once more rode through clouds, but this time we also got to see the clouds from above at a lookout! The roads were just perfect, long bends for miles and miles and the landscape was spectacular.

Isn’t that nice?

After a short break we continued on, just enjoying the ride. Later that day we hit a detour which brought us to Sparta just at the end of the day. We booked into a motel – thanks to some serious haggling by Val we got the rooms cheaper after presenting a RAA membership card.  Who knew the discounts carried over /this/ far? 😉
We had missed diner time in the local restaurant next to the motel, so in the end we went to a Mexican Restaurant called Mis Arados . This turned out to be a great find – the food was great and cheap! Back in the room, when we tried to plan the next days. We soon realised that the museum in Magi Valley was closed on Tue and Wednesday – of course these were the days we would be there. Will see what we can do about it tomorrow.

Day: 29
Date: 30/4
City: Ashville, North Carolina
Miles ridden: 161
Cumulative miles: 1380

We decided to skip Maggi Valley, so we had a late start today, leaving around 11:00. Blue Ridge Parkway was great, nice curves and beautiful landscape, like a mixture out of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria and some of the mountain roads in Tasmania. We had a couple of stops at some nice places:

The best stop for Bjoern was on the top of a mountain, where you could see the 4 or 5 smaller mountain ranges in the far distance. The lookouts are often crooked and stopping there proved to be hazardous to one of our bikes in particular. Val had our first ding on the trip when the bike tipped over on a stop next to a curb. She and Victoria- her bike – (Brian’s is called Victor by the way 🙂 ) got some bruises, but hopefully that will all pass soon.

This is shortly after the topple; all picked up and ready to go again. Way to go Val!

We enjoyed the remainder of the day

Note the Wombat and the Diddles in the picture! 🙂

The cloudy weather prevented us from seeing everything clearly, but it was still beautiful.

For lunch we went out of the park and found a place that did sandwich subs – baguette like things – quite tasty.

As a side note this sign in the loo caught Bjorn’s attention and made him laugh out loud:

After some more awesome scenery,

we arrived in Ashville around 17:30. We found nice accommodation and had a nice Mexican meal with huge beer for me and a Margarita for Sigrid.

Next morning we caught up with Mike,

and then we continued along the parkway. By chance we met Mike again at the end of the parkway and that night and stayed together in Bryson city.

This is the visitor centre at the end of the Blue Ridge Parkway

One exiting thing remains on this leg of the trip – the ride of the Tail of Dragon Road…

…which will happen tomorrow 🙂

Day: 27
Date: 28/4
City: Waynesboro, Virginia
Miles ridden: 220
Cumulative miles: 970

We packed the bikes and left Washington around 10:30 and arrived at the entry of the Blue Ridge parkway after lunch. It started to get a bit cold for most of us. I don’t know what Val’s new motorbike jacket (the one she purchased at twisted throttle) is made off… When we stopped, we were all cold but Val was saying she was hot… We should see if the jacket glows as well at night 😉

Anyway, we had the technology, so we hooked up our new heated liner and gloves and from then on it was toasty warm. Since it looked like it would start to rain, we also put on our rain gear, and were setup for anything. After the first couple of miles we encountered a bear mum with her two cups to cross the road. Before I got the photo camera out, they disappeared into the scrubs.

The bear mum minding her own business.

Later on we saw some dear on the side of the road and crossing the road as well. Since the speed limit is 35mph, it was no problem to stop in time to let the Dear cross. When we climbed up the hill, we started to ride through clouds, so we reduced the speed even more to avoid dear rash;)

Did I mentioned the heated vests and gloves?

It makes riding so much more enjoyable when you don’t have to shiver on the bike. Since it was cold and sometimes drizzling, we decided to skip the camp ground and go for a motel.

Day: 24
Date: 25/4 -26/4
City: Washington, District Columbia
Miles ridden: 0
Cumulative miles: 757
The plan today was to go to the Smithsonian, Val felt a bit unwell and stayed home. So Wombat, Sigrid and I had a 20 minute walk to the train station. The area was nice, the houses were well looked after, so nothing really justified the dark picture drawn by the lady at the front desk yesterday evening. I also noticed that there was no graffiti on the train station or in the train. It  all looked very new and clean.

The train ride didn’t take long at all, only about 20 minutes. When we arrived in Washington, we made our way to the Smithsonian and passed some impressive buildings. I’m sure we could have easily spent another week here without getting bored. There are American Archives, the International Spy Museum, 19 different Smithsonian museums…… We had to cherry pick. We picked the ‘National Air and Space museum’ and the ‘National Museum of the American Indian’ for our 2 day visit. When we arrived at the Smithsonian, we were surprised to find that the entry was free. We were stunned when we looked at the entrance hall; there were replicas and original sof different space modules and airplanes. It took some time before we could move on to the next area.

Below are the Gemini 4 and Apollo 11 command module.

A model of the Viking Lander

and some exhibition about the entire American Space race/program, the beginning of flying, a whole section with physics experiments that explained why airplanes fly, Space shuttle project …., in fact so much that we only got to see the first half of it the first day! Around 17:00 we were asked to leave. It was still daylight so we had a look at the Washington Monument (closed due to earthquake damage) and the ‘White House’.

The Diddles and us in front of the White House.

The day was gone in no time. After a nice meal in an Irish pub (and some Guinness) we hopped back onto the train and walked from the train station to the hotel.

The next day, the four of us got on the train to Washington to look at the 2^nd half of the Smithsonian and to spend the rest of the day in the ‘Nation6al Museum of the American Indian’.

One of the interesting parts was to walk through the Skylab workshop to see how the Astronauts worked and lived in there.

There was as well an exhibition about the history of aircraft carriers, which took much longer to go through than we thought. After rushing through the last sections of the Smithsonian we went to the’ National Museum of the American Indian’ which was not far away. The surroundings and the building were impressive

As usual we did not have enough time to see it all, but it gave us a good overview and we earmarked Washington for another visit 😀

Day: 21 – 24
Date: 22/4 – 25/4
City: Washington, District Columbia
Miles ridden: 207
Cumulative miles: 757

As the screws and the bracket for one bash plate were lost during transport, B&B sent a new set via express post and we got it yesterday. Bjoern is finally fitting the second bash plate!

Meantwhile wombat is fitting the screen extension on their bikes:

We where testing the heated vests, note the look of total satisfaction on Bjoern face

And our motorbike titles arrived finally too:

We’re also getting used to the strange signs, like this one:

which is ‘turn left to turn right’…

We also arranged the first service on the bikes

Had some relaxing time with Stephen’s family, here is Katherine with our Diddles and Mr Guinness (the dog).

Some beer at night:

And now, finally, the last day arrived! Val’s and wombat’s bikes are at Stephen’s house, ours are still at the workshop- so we’re off to the workshop, Yee-harw, bikes are ready!

And as an extra for todays update, some pictures from the family who hosted us for almost an entire month!

Karen and Sarah:

Colleen and Kathrine:

Karen and Katherine:

Stephen and Karen:

A MASSIVE Thank You to all of you!

And with that, it’s back to our preparations.

Apparently, this should all fit onto the bikes… uhm…

Oh, and so it does!

After some drama with our failed attempt to send stuff back we finally left at 3:30 pm for Washington!

Here’s a shot of us storing the last part of our luggage: the diddles.

We are finally on the road for real!

All bikes fully packed:

We arrived in Washington at around 19:00.  When we checked in, we realized that a policemen in a car was watching the boom gate of the hotel. The lady in the office assured us that since the officer has been there, they had way fewer problems:-). When we asked her if we could go for a walk to get something for dinner, she strongly discouraged us from walking in the street at night.
So tonight we got all of our gear into the hotel room and put a chain through all four bikes!

Here’s hoping they’re still there tomorrow 😉

Day: 20
Date: 21/4
City: Fords, New Jersey
Miles ridden: 150
Cumulative miles: 450

We all got our bikes out today…

And then went to a shopping centre. Ordered a prepaid phone card for me, Wombat and Val ordered packsafe net for each of us. Next we decided to do a test ride to Bear Mountain, which has a very pretty road.
I also tried to use the video camera, the battery was flat. Must be because of the GPS I think :/

We also climbed to the top of the mountain, which had beautiful view.

19/04

The troubleshooting by Sigrid and Simon was successful; the problem was that Sigrids version of Word wasn’t setup to send the pictures to the server. Once fixed, we had breakfast at 9:30, but by that time Wombat and Val were really hungry. After breakfast we packed our stuff and started the drive at around 11:30. Val once more found beautiful accommodation with indoor pool, heated spa and gym for $72 about 10 miles away from Twisted Throttle, which is the shop that supplies the heated vests and other motorbike accessories we need for our trip.

We arrived there around 19:20 and had a nice meal at Fat Belly, which is sort of a Irish pub.

We went back to the hotel and had a swim in the pool and relaxed in the hot spa. Wombat didn’t have bathers with him, so neither Val nor him could use the pool.
Once we were relaxed we had a brief meeting to see what we’ll do the next couple of days.

20/04

The day started by us attempting to use the pool again, but it was closed for cleaning :/

So we went to breakfast a little earlier and met up with Wombat and Val.

After packing up we left for Twisted Throttle where we were planing to stay for an hour. We arrived 10 AM, started browsing and got really good customer service from Will. He was patient enough to give us advice, let us try all the different sizes, waited until we made up our mind (I’ll take this bracket! Actually, wait, I don’t need it. No, wait, Actually I take it 😉 ). There was also free coffee, donuts and some pinball machines :-).
Val and Wombat disappeared into the twisted throttle dungeon (a top notch workshop with all the bells and whistles that an engineering workshop needs) to try some of the equipment on the currently build project bike, which is a 2012 V Storm.  All four of us bought heaps of stuff- but for Sigrid the most important thing was the heated vests and heated gloves. In the end, everybody was happy and Will was kind enough to take a picture of us and put it onto the twisted throttle Facebook.

After our little shopping spree we left there around 2pm, which was just marginally longer than the planed 1 hour… So we headed down to the nearby beach and took in the scenery.

The awesome T-shirts are thanks to twisted throttle!

Before heading back to New Jersey we had some food at a local store called Iggys

Later that night we got caught in a bad traffic jam coming back into New York. It took us almost 2 hours to move about 4 miles, which reminded me of Berlin. The time felt even longer for Bjoern and Wombat who were busting to go. It was quite funny to see them racing at the next petrol stop after the traffic congestion cleared, and the total relieve on their faces after J

18/04

We got treated to a coffee from room service by Val at around 8 o’clock. Had a brief chat with Simon about our Blog problem but we postponed the troubleshooting to tomorrow. Went for breakfast, simple continental including Muffins which were quite nice.

We drove to Niagara Falls and parked the car infront of the travel information building. We only had to pay $5 (instead of $10) and got a free coffee with it. Ok, Sigrid said it was quite bitter, but it /was/ free 😛

The information desk clerk tried to sell us a 4 hour trip for $80. Sigrid and Wombat said that they saw something similar at the other information stall for only $33. So we gave it a miss and went to the other information stall. The lady was very helpful and advised us that most of the attraction would be free, only for the boat trip and the Cave of the winds had a charge attached to them. So we decided to entertain ourselves (good choice!). First we walked over the pedestrian bridge to the Luna Island.

The view from the Island was magnificent. We were directly on the edge of the American falls.

And we got a picture of the honeymooners!

After that we went to the Terrapin point on the Horse shoe falls, which is the Canadian side of the falls.  I have to admit that it was even better than Luna Island.

It seems that the Canadian falls are much bigger. From there we went to the ‘Cave of the winds complex’ which brought us down to the base of the waterfalls by elevator.

It was really nice, but most of the walkways were closed for renovation. All of us realised that we must have taken more footage then we thought, because nearly all of our batteries where empty. So we went back to the hotel, got the spare batteries and memory chips, had a quick bite at McDonalds and went back to the falls for the boat trip. We got the tickets, went onto the tower, took a couple of pictures and then headed down to the boat mooring.

We hopped onto the boat not long after, and had a marvellous boat trip.

After that we went onto the bridge to enter Canada.

Everything went well and we crossed the border without problems.  Once on the Canadian side we looked for a coffee shop. Quite by accident we discovered that we could still go on the ‘behind the waterfall walk’.  It was 6:20 and the walk was open until 7:00.

Unfortunately the walk was a bit disappointing.

So we headed over to a restaurant and waited until 8:30 when the lights for the waterfall come on. Now THAT was spectacular. We took loads of couple of pictures, here’s some of them:

and went back over the Canadian American Bridge and then to our hotel home.

17/4
miles: 303
Sigrid organized a car over the internet for this part of the trip.
We picked up the car in the morning with Wombat, but we would have needed to pay another $50 to allow additional drivers – like Brian and Val. Opted against it, which meant that only Sigrid and Bjoern could drive this hire car:

As it turned it it wasn’t an issue anyway.
We allowed the wombat to drive first

then Bjoern drove to Niagara without any problems. Wombat navigated. Sigrid and Val had their laptops to keep them happy. Along the way we had some fun with our travel companions

And a well deserved coffe break:

As we approached the falls we were greeted by beautiful blooming trees, they looked like they had snow on them!

We saw the the water falls from the top and raced towards the edge. We were very excited!

Then the falls.. even only a short look was awe-inspiring

After the excursion we looked for accommodation – it all seemed a bit dear around there… Finally, with Val’s help looking up accommodation on the internet, we found a newly build Motel 6 for a good price

Everyone like it 🙂

Had dinner after that at the ‘Ponderosa’ restaurant which reminded us a bit on Sizzlers back home a few years ago. We chose it sow we could get something not too spicy as Wombat had some issues with his gallbladder. We also organized some oats for him, but with no microwave or cooking in the room he’s been able to avoid them thus far 😉.

The night ended with us having a beer and checking out the pictures we took of our trip so far.

Day: 10 – 12
Date: 11/4 – 13/4
City: Fords, New Jersey
Miles ridden: 300
Cumulative miles: 300

Here we are, having a yummy breakfast in front of the Central Vermont Bike shop. We almost have the bikes!

Finally, we arrived at Central Vermont Motorcycles and met Jay and Jeremy. We talked with them on the phone and via email for  nearly 3 Months and they helped us a lot during the purchase and registration process. Finally we got to meet them in person!

When you have to do something remotely, it’s been my experience that there’s a couple of things that don’t go to plan.  You just accept it and move on.  But not with these Guys!
Everything was organized and went perfectly smoothly.  Even our special number plates had arrived.
The customer service here is just exceptional. Jay even drove us back from the airport where we had to drop off the rental car!

Once all the paperwork was done, Bjoern got to work on the bikes putting our additional luggage and the GPS on. Meanwhile the Diddles spent some time taking possession of their bikes 🙂

The first time we have brand new bikes!

The number plates look great!

You may have noticed…. My topbox does not clip on anymore. Bjoern fixed it with a strap. We are almost ready to go now, the only thing is that the weather is rather chilly and rainy. So out comes all of our raingear – that should keep us reasonably warm!

Eventually we had to do some minor mechanical work on the road… the batteries for the GPS were almost empty and to add the device to the power supply of the new bikes requires some modifications…

Done, but it became a bit late so we stopped in a small town about 100 miles away from Jersey

What a great day, though!  Time for sleep 🙂

Today we met Mathias and Gabi at 8 am, so they would still be able to go shopping after breakfast. Well, it ended up being 8:45 before we got going, but it was a good plan 😉
We had a nice breakfast while Gabi copied my pictures to her Macbook. We went back to the hotel, Gabi and Mathias said good bye and went to the city for their shopping spree. Meanwhile we ordered a taxi and got a ride to the LaGuardia airport, more specifically, to the Hertz car rental stall. We first got a Toyota Corolla, but the bumper was sagging, so we got another car.  This one was a Chevrolet.

Finally we left for Stephens home. There was a brush fire next to the highway, so it took us about 2 hours to get there (stop and go, stop and go, stop and go…). We  only arrived at Stephens house after the GPS told us to turn right too early, so after some UTurns (which always reminds me of a family holiday in Canberra) we arrived at Stephens house. Katherine opened the door and kept Mr Guinnes – the big black New Foundland dog – in check. We said hello to Colleen, repacked our stuff (we got the GPS and brackets!) and left some stuff in Stephens Van. We were not clear if we could leave the Van as it was or if we should put all of our stuff under the decking. Nobody knew and Sara said they would move it if needed. So we took off.

This is a picture from one of the service areas; they all seem to look the same

Five hours later we checked in into the Red Roof Inn – nice sign 😉

We had booked it in the morning, including free wi-fi and breakfast with waffles, pool and a sauna. We had a swim, sat in the sauna for a bit and, after a short shower, went shopping at 22:00 at night. We got some Australian wine (cheaper than we get it back home!) and some carrots, dolmades and some cheese. We went home, celebrated a successful day, played with the Spot and the Kindle for a bit and went to bed.
Tomorrow we get our bikes, yippee!.

I did notice that the bash plates hadn’t been in Stephens Van. I should really ask Stephen if it might be somewhere else. I’ll just have to wait until we are back, and then check what is there and what is missing…