Discovering New is Old

It had rained overnight but was dry and cool when we left Sutton. Our aim was to ride to Clay via WV Route 4, but we got lost before we started and ended up on a county road that ran due south through Tesla, rather than west. We cannot blame the GPS for that - we went wrong all by ourselves, because after setting the GPS we decided to detour to see Sutton Lake and the dam that created it, one mile east of the town.

However, the road we found ourselves on was perfect motorcycling: the one we had planned to ride could not have been more fun.

When we eventually reached Clay we were in high spirits, and stopped for breakfast in Granny K's Diner. The entire decoration of the diner was CocaCola related: the curtains, the wall paper frieze, the gingham table cloths, and  rows of the old, beautifully designed coke bottles above the serving counter... Cans and plastic bottles don't have the same style. The traditional American meal of "biscuit(like an English scone)  and gravy" was excellent here. All these little fun diners have their own personality and excellent food. They try and save the history of their area.

The kids loved the lolly jar and swivel seats.

 

This little kid loves people. We were made so welcome. His parents didn't look quite awake yet.

Continuing south on Route 16 from Clay we followed the course of the Elk River through Gauley Bridge to Fayetteville. We turned onto Route 16 to ride the bridge across the New River Gorge. This bridge, at 876 feet high is the highest vehicle bridge in the US. It is 3030 feet long - almost a kilometre long and a bloody impressive engineering feat - even if several bridges in France and China have now reached further and higher.

After crossing the it, we turned into the visitor centre viewing point, and watched a video about the environment and the building of the bridge. Ironically, the New River (as it came to be called, although no one knows why) is actually one of the oldest rivers in the US. They think only the Nile is older.

While we were watching the video, it started raining. We waited half an hour for the rain to go away, but no luck. There was nothing to do but get into our wet weather gear. We rode off down the old road that zigzagged down one side of the canyon and crossed the old bridge at the bottom of the gorge before zigzagging back up the other side. A magic road especially in the fog and rain. Fortunately this narrow strip of bitumen is one-way for most of its length. As we rode down, the old road passed under the arch of the new bridge which was shrouded in fog. The huge towers supported on the road surface, soared vertically up and were quickly swallowed up by the mist.

Remarkably, by the time we reached the bottom of the gorge the rain had stopped and the mist completely cleared.  We crossed the refurbished original bridge to go back up the other side of the gorge. It was suddenly hot, and so it was out of the wet weather gear after only 15 minutes of use.

There were many rafts and canoes in the river paddling in circles until their crews built up courage to run the rapids that were under the new bridge. You could hear the occasional scream.

We were soon back at the top of the gorge,  crossing the bridge for the second time to continue our journey to Rainelle. From here we turned south on WV 20, chasing the scenic roads south. Our jackets were still damp and thanlfully kept us cool. Do you detect a lean on the corners.

At Hinton we stopped for a drink and icecream. There were four or five bikers there who had just come out, cones in hand, and we started chatting. A group of non-bikers came over to join in. One was a Queenslander, now resident and working in the US who recognised our accents and was glad to meet a couple of fellow countrymen.

 

Our journey continued along quiet country roads and through delightful sleepy towns. Sometimes a small number of horses, cows, goats or sheep would be enclosed behind white fences.

We finished our journey today in Princeton, a few mile north of the Virginian border. Doing the laundry at the block of flats across the road took forever especially when we had to chase laundry powder.