Beautiful Sunday Ride

Yes, it is still winter here but last weekend the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I had a 3 day weekend and took advantage of the weather all three days. On Sunday, someone asked what I was up to and we both headed out for a few hours ride through the back roads of North and South Carolina.

When I look for a ride, I just plot various point of interest that I want to see. I then let the mapping software do its thing and plot the route. With my GPS, I can specify various parameters such as hills, curves, pavement, etc. and then I let it pick the route. It usually comes up with some surprisingly cool rides. Today was no exception.

I was not focused on dirt roads but was more interested in just taking a scenic ride. We met up at 1:30 and headed out. There were a number of roads I have never been on before. It took us through quite a bit of farm country and some of these roads were quite rough. Since we both were on adventure bikes, the rougher the better.

At one point we stopped to take the picture of the abandoned silo (shown at the start of the story). As we ambled along, we got to one point where the road was closed. Things like this typically happen on these rides so you adapt. We took a different path and after 5 or so miles were back on track.

At one turn, we hit a dirt/gravel road which took us through some more farms and farmland. It was too short lived (about 1/2 mile long). We did get back on pavement but again, it was a bit rough (there were a number road signs warning drivers of the rough road ahead). We eventually got to a turn and the road turned to pure dirt and mud. We decided to follow it since we could see where it would end up in the distance.

As we drove this muddy road, we kept descending downhill. I kept thinking to myself that this is going to cross a creek and then go back uphill to the road we could see in the distance. Yup! We came across the creek so we stopped and talked about it.

The creek was about 18+ inches deep. Looking at the terrain, there was not ONE rock in site so we assumed it would be a mud/dirt bottom. Seeing that we were one bikes that way in excess of 500+ pounds each, we decided to not cross as we did not want to sink up to our axles (even though it was nice day, it was still only 55 degrees and getting cooler).

After we carefully turned around in the muddy steep road, a few locals came down on the road on a side-by-side, an ATV, and a dirt bike. We chatted with them for a bit and they told us the creek bottom was solid as concrete. Total rock bottom so we decided to cross. Again, we carefully turned around on the muddy road and headed to the creek.

The first to cross was Eric. Here is a video of him crossing the creek (the video is from the cam on my bike). The first half of the video is my bike crossing and the second half is watching him cross.

After Eric crossed, he was able to shoot a video of my bike crossing the creek. Not great form but still was a blast.

After the creek, we continued on the back roads until we reached a convenience store where we took a bathroom break. While looking at our phones, we hooked up with another rider and all road back to Charlotte and met up at the Thirsty Beaver. Overall, a fantastic day.