WV Midnight Madness Weekend Camping (HD)

[DCMC]

I guess this is my first ride report.

Summary video:
Link to HD Video:


This weekend was awesome. I had a 60ish pound load for 2 days of riding out from DC to the GW National forrest in WV.

I started out around 2PM from DC, and within 10 minutes I dropped the bike at library while going to drop off a book. (no picture) I probably should have left earlier, so I booked it out on 66 and 211.

New tires

Loaded up (cheater image from previous trip; notice spent tire)

The riding was good

I stopped for a burger

Next I was over the Shennandoah park over the Thornton pass around 5:30 PM, then down through the valley and up over the New Market pass to fill up.

The general idea:

Once I got out west of New Market it got better. Sceneic farm roads were great and around, then found dirt, got all turned around and lost an hour, then back to dirt and charged (slowly) till 11:00 PM on the twisting part of the pink route.

Then I found the dirt

The elevation was looking up, and then down, and then up again. This was my past still picture of the day, but the video was still running.
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I got off to start the camera rolling

Found Vepco Road at the Untitled Placemark on the map

It got really dark in the woods

When I got back to the pavement the sky opened up and was riding behind a semi to where I thought I was going to camp. It started raining harder—then pouring—and I ducked off into a bank ATM drive-through I've seen other inmates use to get out of the rain.

Once the rain let up a little I unzipped the gussets of my jacket, put my tool roll under the jacket, and set out towards the coordinates of a campsite I'd heard about. As I made my way towards the site the rain was picking up a little, but I kept going in hopes of putting a tarp up right away. Well, those coordinates were in the middle of some dense woods, so I proceeded on to a campsite by around 1:00 AM and bedded down. I was too tired to think about collecting media at that point, so that's one part I fell down on on this trip.

I got up around five in the morning and was rewarded with some refreshing fog and a nice sunrise. I was really glad at this point that I'd worn my fall jacket and pants.


Aaand then I ran out of gas

Without caffine, I wasn't able to operate the riding and speaking parts of my brain at the same time as you'll hear if you watch the video. Breakfast could not have come too soon

At this point I decided I'd like an easy ride home, so I decided to take Skyline Drive back out through Front Royal and then slab it back to DC.

Skyline was nice


And I met another adventurer with a little honda scooter and a Toura-Depot luggage system. He had 14,000 miles on his scooter and was headed town to TN.

There was no point documenting the highway ride back to Washington.

It was beer time as soon as I was home Unloaded




What do you guys think of the little watermark I did on the photos? I tried to make it look like the electronic date stamp in early 1990's film cameras. Ye or Nay?