What a beautiful ride for the first warm Saturday of the year. Scott, Erik, Brian, Tom, and I enjoyed the fine food at the Old Town Diner. We did not start the ride at the diner however. First we visited the Indian Motorcycle dealership in Hagerstown to take advantage of their promotion. They would trade a new Indian tee shirt for any old, nasty motorcycle tee shirt. After the trade, we headed north to the Michaux State Forest.
Well to be honest, Erik, Brian, and I did not head
directly there. I missed a turn and figured, why not just let the GPS recalculate and turn down another road? The answer was that it might try to route you to a dead end road with a dirt trail after it. After a few U-turns, we headed back down the road to the original turn and got back on track to route 233.
Route 233 is a favorite road. It winds through the Michaux State Forest and Caledonia State Park. There is little traffic as only tourists and the inhabitants of the scattered hunting lodges travel this road. The forest floor on both sides of the road were still thick with snow but the road was in good shape. There was some loose gravel and an occasional puddle of snow melt tickling across the road. There was no problem with that because the temperatures rose to sixty, even in the Pennsylvania hills.
View Larger MapOne of the cool things about a heavy snowfall is that the white ground cover lasts even after the temperatures rise to springtime levels. When we took a break, we took off our coats and enjoyed this view in our shirt sleeves.
First warm ride of 2016 by
Bruce Dimon, on Flickr
At Mount Holly Springs, I turned south on Route 34 towards Gettysburg. I had figured on ending the ride with a nice warm coffee in Gettysburg. That plan changed when I saw that the Half Pint Creamery had opened for Spring.
http://halfpintcreamery.com/ I had two scoops, Irish Cream and cherry. Yes, it was warm enough to sit outside and eat ice cream. The motorcycling season has begun.