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Dc to Catskills NY and back

R

rocketman

Guest
Spend the past weekend and the 2 days before on a little ride up to my timeshare in the Catskills a little over 400 miles one way. With side trips around 900 Plus mostly 2 or four lane back roads with very little traffic. Just my kind of riding, just me the bike and my camera, so I could stop where I pleased, when I pleased without having to worry about losing the group or waiting for anyone else. My ÔÇÿ78 ran great, as always, with just few minor mishaps that bungee cords and extra bolts solved quickly and it loved the cool weather and riding the hills as much as I.
Spent most of the time riding along various river valleys, Susquehanna as seen here
river-view-1.jpg

and several other smaller rivers on the way up then over the Catskills into mid part of NY in the eastern side just north the Mt themselves. Weather was cool high 30-40 in the AM and 60's during the day in NY as I was up just around 2000 feet at the timeshare and itÔÇÖs been a cool spring here anyway. On the Way back the first half day was spent along the Delaware water gap
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and past several really large reservoirs used by NYC. Then I had to head back down 33 to 78 since I had only one day to return home, around 470 miles, but did it in just over 11.5 hours. And that was with plenty of stops to take photos and chat with folks along the way.
It was interesting to see spring running in reverse as I traveled north since most growth in NY was still in pre-spring mode, i.e. no leaves and very few buds on most bushes whereas Virginia is fully bloomed now. On the way back it was just the opposite so I got to see a month of spring go by in the span of 11 hours. Took a ton of pictures with the D70 and did them all in RAW mode this time. Now of course i have to process each one individually so it will take some time to go thru all 125! But the quality is so much better in raw with no pre-processing or compression being done by the camera.
Met a lot of great folks along the way and stumbled into a weekly biker nite
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outside of Wilkes-Berry PA where I spent one night. It was strictly by accident that I ended up my first day in the area. It was at a local eatery where I just happened to decide to have dinner Thursday evening. As I was eating dinner I kept hearing bikes pull into the parking lot and by the time I finished dinner around 250 bikes had shown up and the parking lot was chalk full of machines. Turns out it has been going on for the past 2 years every Thursday. Mostly cruisers but a few BMW's, a packet of crotch rockets, a nice Royal Enfield and Ural,
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both fitted with sidecars from the local distributor called Underground cycles and then an old Water Buffalo showed up! ( The Suzuki 750 2-stroke water cooled that only was made for about 2-3 years back in the 70's and was known to be a real pig!) Wonder where he gets parts for that thing?

Next day I stopped in Bloomburg Pa and saw a chopper shop with a very radical machine in the window
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Talked with the owners wife for bit a took a few pics of some on the machines inside the shop as well.

There were some really nice houses in town, big old Victorian style places that obviously are well maintained like this one here
house-1.jpg


Saw some nice sunsets in the mountains with very subtle colors
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and played with reflections in the lakes in morning before the wind came up
reflections-1.jpg


Anyway, I post a full report with pics on my site soon but just for teasers here's some of the better shots from the trip.

Finally some of the many interesting "folks" I met along the way, this guy here was reading his paper on the front porch
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not very talkative, but he seemed to be a good listener.! :lol

And finally one of a purple martin sitting on his front stoop. There were a row of 4 really nice bird houses just by the river across from the state capitol on the riber in Harrisburg.

martin-1-crop.jpg


All in all one fantastic trip 'cept for the wind on Sunday that nearly blew me off the bridge crossing back into harrisburg, man the river is wide right along there took nearly 5 minutes (or so it seemed with the crosswinds on the bridge!).

RM :lol:
 
well done rocketman. can't wait for the full report. nice shots.
i'm digging that ural with the sidecar and the gas can. why your passenger can reach over and fill the tank whilst you are still in motion. non-stop travel.
thanks for sharing.
 
Some more random shots from the trip
these were taken for the current photo challenge on dgrin.com entitled ÔÇ£OneÔÇØ

reflection.jpg


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tree-1.jpg


RM
 
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