The Blue Ridge Gathering - ST Owners Club (STOC)

Saturday - Sunday, October 8 - 9, 2011

"Leaf Peeper Creeper, Leaf Peeper Creeper
Driving down the road.
I want to drive too, But don't know if I can;
' Cause I'm afraid
Of the Leaf Peeper Creeper man"

(paraphrased from Stephen King's "Tommyknockers")

What a great way to finish up the moto camping season. This time every year, the online riding group to which Roo and I belong, ST Owners Club (STOC), gathers somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a 4 day campout. This club is a brand and model specific virtual club for owners of Honda's ST1100 and ST1300 Sport Touring motorcycles. We have camping outings throughout the US during the riding season, with the Southeast mountain camping culminating with the Blue Ridge Gathering. Usually after this date, it is too cold in the mountains once the sun goes down. It is for me at any rate. This weekend in October also coincides pretty close to the peak foliage change at the higher elevations. Roo wanted to veg out at home this weekend after painting our office all last weekend, so I was flying solo. Besides, STOC events are usually guy fests anyway. Hey, these machines weigh 640 lbs! Not very many women are going to want to manhandle a 640 lb. beaST (and if they can, and do, I don't want to get on their bad side!).

A busy workload this week kept me from going for anything but an overnight. But, I'll take it. The weather report was for beautifully clear skies Saturday, but bbbrrrrutally cold Saturday night , calling for temps in the high 30's to low 40's. Ok, I'll suck it up and use the opportunity to fine tune my winter camp sleeping gear. Yeah, that's what I call it. Homey don't do no winter camping though!

Our campsite this year is at Moonshine Creek Campground in Balsam, NC. This is a privately owned campground that has tent camp sites, rental cabins, and RV sites. They also offer a large ground space for groups who want to tent camp for $8 per tent. And so we did. Can't beat that price! 

Off I went and headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway once again, looking forward to seeing some beautiful fall colors. The campground is only four miles from the Parkway, so it was the perfect route to take.



In the same shot I took last week, everything was very green!
That's NC Hwy 215 in the backgound-the road I took up to the BRP.
What a difference a week makes!



At this elevation on the BRP, peak color burst was
about 3-4 days away.



This is just above Waynesville, NC on the BRP. Beautiful, yes?

However, I forgot about the LEAF PEEPER CREEPERS. Like ghouls in a Stephen King novel, they come out every halloween season seeking to get their LEAF PEEPER CREEPER MOBILES as close to 1 MPH as they can, while their ghoulish eyeballs peruse the fall foliage, giving no thought to the long line of cars, motorbikes, and bicycles that lie in their wake. And when that last golden leaf falls from the tree, POOF!, they disappear like a vampire in the sunlight. I have nothing against enjoying a drive through beautiful fall colors, heck that's what I was doing. But for the love of god, this is a public road. Why do they think it's ok to drive 20 MPH BELOW the speed limit? To paraphrase Sammy Hagar: "Post my name wanted dead or alive; take my license and all that jive; but I... CAN'T... DRIVE... 25! 
But really, I only got behind one creeper like that. But the stories that prevailed around the campfire this night from fellow ST owners who rode the Parkway today and got caught behind multiple Stephen King Creepers was pretty amusing.
Coming upon my exit from the BRP, I rolled onto NC Hwy 74 for a very short distance, then turned onto the road that would lead me to Moonshine Creek Campground. What a beautiful area, this Balsam, NC. The road kept meandering farther and farther back into the woods. There was nothing around here. I started to get worried as it began to look like this road was going to end in dirt. I don't ride dirt. The beaST don't ride dirt. Did I miss my turn? This was not looking good. Thoughts of another ride where the beaST and I ended up on a narrow dirt road involving lots of sweat, a tip over, and charging dogs, popped into my head. But that's a story for another time. Deeper into the woods I slowly rolled, scanning ahead for the pavement to end. And then................

 Whew! What a relief. I made it, and still on pavement! Rolling into the campground, the paved entrance road transformed into hard pack gravel and dirt. Ok. I'm cool. This I am used to in campgrounds. Parking the beaST, I scanned the group tent camping area for some unoccupied grass. Finding a spot big enough to not be right on top of the guy next to me, I dumped some of my gear there to lay claim to it, then marched up to the office to register and pay up my eight bucks.



The group campsite-look at all those beautiful ST's!





Group campsite



Row of ST's with a few stray non-Hondas that must have gotten lost!
That red ST1300 in the foreground is a beauty - my next ST?



After checking in and setting up camp, there wasn't much more for me to do but chill out. I had arrived in camp late, having done a trail run in the morning and departing from home around noon. But this is good, as all I really wanted to do once I got here was recover from my run, enjoy the gorgeous natural surroundings and catch up on some reading. Oh, and take a nap, because tonight would probably be a late night around the campfire with the guys.

 

 

 

 



Moonshine Creek runs right through camp

I strolled around the campground, meeting some RV folks who were at the back end of the property and watching college football on their bigger-than- my-home-TV screens in their motorhomes. That's camping to them, I guess. Here are a few pics of the campground:



Decked out for Halloween

The still

 

 



Moonshine Creek



Natural beauty surrounds this campground

As dusk approached, I whipped out my trusty Pocket Rocket stove and cooked up a great campside meal, thank you very much. Somebody started a roaring fire in the communal fire pit, and just in time too as it was starting to get pretty cold now that the sun had gone down. Moving my chair to the fire, along with my favorite adult beverage, the recapping of the days riding began.  Well, around about midnight, I was cooked, fried, toast. I needed sleep. Bidding goodnight to the guys left huddling around the fire, I walked back to my tent. Jeeeeezzzzzz! It's frickin' cold (being polite here)! I hope my layering system works tonight! Got into my camp jammies and scurried into my bag. G'night.
Up in the AM, I actually had a good nights sleep! I was toasty! It worked! Fantastic. i have had many a cold night camping in early spring and late fall in the mountains. No more! Finally got it right. Must right this down.
I took my time breaking camp, as my ride home was only three hours. Some folks left yesterday and very early this morning for some long distance trips home. We had folks show up from as far away as Kansas!
After packing up the ST, I took one more walk around this beautiful campground and came upon ..........
a Beeeaagle!




Snoopy. Really. Snoopy.

This is Snoopy! He is a Beagle rescue. Snoopy and his owner live pretty close to Moonshine and camp here quite often. Snoopy's owner said that this is Snoopy's favorite campground, and is happiest when he comes here. Sure looks that way to me! Look at that smile. That's a happy dog.
Bidding Snoopy goodbye, it was time to head out. Firing up the ST's V-4, I roll out of Moonshine and head home. I'll be back next spring, hopefully with Roo, for another ST Owners Club outing at Moonshine: CampStoc. Maybe Snoopy will be there too.
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                   Thanks for reading our 2011 blog posts and for all your positive comments.
                                                         Check out the site in 2012!





But Baby, It's Cold Outside

" Oh the weather outside is frightful,

but in here, it's so delightful.

And since we've no place to go,

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow........."

Well, the weather wasn't really frightful. Cold, yes. Frightful, no. Unless you're afraid of the cold, which judging by the lack of bikes on the road, many are. It did snow overnight, apparently. And yes, by golly, I do have places to go. But I'm getting ahead of myself here........

Sunday October 2, 2011 - 260 miles

Little Switzerland, NC - Diamondback Motorcycle and Sports Car Route NC226A

After painfully watching my Florida Gators get soundly spanked by The Alabama Gruesome Tide Saturday night, I knew I needed a nice, long motorbike ride to lift my spirits and ignite the adventure fire in me once again. I couldn't think of a better way than to jump on the beaST and ride a road I had never been on before.

Sunday morning dawned bright and COLD! Perfect. I wanted to try out a new layering system on my riding gear, as well as some new cold weather gear. So cold was good. I left Roo and the quadripeds all nestled in bed, while visions of.......ok, no more Christmas song analogies.

At 8:30 AM I was rolling down my street, my thermometer reading 43 degrees. I was toasty. The plan being to get to the Blue Ridge Parkway via Hwy 276 and through the Pisgah Forest, with my first stop at the Pisgah Inn at Mt. Pisgah, approximately 90 miles away. As the road slanted upward, my thermometer numbers fell, so that by the time I reached the Pisgah Inn, the temp reading was 38 degrees and the wind was blowing like stink. I was still toasty.

Until I took off my gloves. My hands immediately got very, very, cold, very, very, quickly. This quick cold hands/fingers thing all stems from a frostbite incident back in the 1980's while living in Florida. Don't ask. It's another story.

So I ate, drank, saw a man about a horse (ask someone if you don't know), put my gloves back on and rolled on down the Parkway. It took about 20 minutes for my hands to warm up again in my new Thinsulate/Goretex winter moto gloves. Then they were fine. Riding along on my favorite road, I kept my speed at the posted 45 MPH to 5 over. The park rangers here are very strict enforcing the posted speed limits, and if you get busted, it's a Federal rap with uber stiff fines. This is a National Park, you know.

So, my next planned stop was Little Switzerland, NC, a teeny, tiny little spot on the map and a great lunch stop. Descending from Mt. Pisgah, the temp began to rise until it hit 51 degrees. Then the road inclined upward once again as I made my way to Mt. Mitchell, the tallest peak on the east coast. Temperatures began falling once again, and by the time I reached Craggy Gardens, I had hit a low of 34 degrees! But I was still toasty!

As I rode through a tunnel and approached Craggy Gardens, I was reveling in the day, the machine, the road, and how great my riding gear was working. Rounding a long, left hand sweeper, I came upon a totally unexpected sight that blew me away. This is what I saw:



Damn! That's cold!

Wow! How cool is that? Pictures don't do it justice. Ice and snow with the sunlight glistening off the trees and grass like a million little prisms, was absolutely beautiful. What a great surprise. Grinning inside my helmet, I mounted the beaST and continued on towards Little Switzerland. Very carefully. Although the temperatures were beginning to rise, there was  some ice on the road in the shady areas. I rode the beaST gingerly until all ice and snow had disappeared. I didn't want to be sliding into Little Switzerland for lunch!

Arriving in Little Switzerland around 2PM, I was very hungry. The lunch venue today was the Switzerland Cafe, one of about 5 buildings that make up the town. Good coffee, great food, highly recommended. Lunch done, it was now time to ride an unknown road; NC226A. In short, what a blast! Not a long road, it curves it's way up to Spruce Pine, NC about 10 miles away. But there's no straight sections! Fantastic! So up to Spruce Pine I flew, turned around, back to Little Switzerland, enjoyed myself so much, I turned around and did it again! Back in Little Switzerland, I stopped in the Cafe store and bought myself a well earned T-shirt.

 Great fun! The sun was now on it's downward trek. Time to get back on the road to home. Back on NC226A to NC226, which is a fun road in itself as it drops down off the ridge. This is also a very curvaceous road, but what was amusing to me was the signage I saw that I have never seen on a mountain road before. I wish I could have taken a picture of it, but there was nowhere to pull off (or I was having too much fun?). This is what it said: " Road worsens after speeding truck ramp." What? The curves did tighten after the ramp, but.....What? Pretty funny. Into Marion, NC where I caught up with NC221 and then on to NC108. This is a beautiful road with long sweepers and beautiful scenery. It wouldn't be much longer until I was home again with Roo and the quadripeds. I wonder what visions were dancing in their heads this morning..........
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