After being unable to ride last week due to rain and unseasonably cold weather (we actually had to turn the heat back on in the house, UGH!!!), we weren’t about to let the slight chance of rain today keep us from riding.

Per usual on Tuesdays, we had to sleep in and didn’t hit the road until around 2pm. We had ran out of our beloved breakfast meats that we get from a meat processing facility nearly 2 hours away, so we decided to throw a cooler in Dwayne’s side case and ride over there to stock up.

Since they close at 5, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to wander from the quickest route, so we took the highway about halfway, then hopped on a back road that we knew would take us in the right direction and wouldn’t be too far out of the way. We ended up missing a turn and going a little further out of the way than we had meant to, but it wasn’t a major detour, so it was okay.

By the time we rolled into Jasper, the heat had risen from 77 when we left the house, to 86, and it was mostly sunny. Unfortunately we hit Jasper about 4:15, and traffic was torturous. When we finally arrived at our destination, Dwayne went in to get the precious merchandise while I mapped out a route to a covered bridge we heard about, about an hour North. We wanted to stay off the main roads as much as possible, so the route I chose had quite a few turns. We didn’t have any way of drawing up a map to follow, so I did my best to memorize the route, which with my memory meant we would likely be getting lost, haha!

By the time we made it out of town and to the first back road, we had sat through a bunch of stoplights, and both us and our bikes were getting quite warm. One of the roads I had us take had a few low sections, and with the crazy amount of rain we’ve had the last couple of weeks, we weren’t sure if it was going to be passable. The first few low sections the water had receded just off of the road, and we remarked that we probably wouldn’t have been so lucky a couple of days ago.

A few miles down the road, we found a spot where the water was still over the road, but we could tell it was only about 6 inches deep, so we decided to go through it. It was deep enough that the front wheel threw water up under our legs, which felt amazing with how hot we were. It isn’t often on a motorcycle that you are thankful to get wet, but in this case, we definitely were. A little further down the road there was a larger section that was under water, and it was actually up to our pegs, so it pretty well soaked my legs all the way up, and the cold water felt amazing!

A couple of roads later, we came upon a beautiful section where the road went between greenery and tree covered rock walls, and at the end of this section there was a grated iron pony truss bridge, followed by another identical bridge a little further down the road. We of course had to stop and take some pictures, and Dwayne told me I did a great job picking out our route. I was once again amused by the fact that we just keep stumbling upon these old bridges without even meaning to.

Eventually we made it to the covered bridge we were going to see. I stopped on the new bridge that had replaced it a few hundred feet down river to snap some pictures, and then we went on to the road that took us over to the bridge itself. There were barricades to keep vehicles from driving across the bridge, which I would have ridden the tiger through to get a better picture, except a couple pulled in right behind us and got out to walk up to the bridge, so I wasn’t able to. It was a beautiful bridge and actually appeared to be very well preserved, so I’m not sure why they don’t allow traffic to cross it. Perhaps it isn’t as structurally sound as it appears to be, or perhaps they just don’t allow it to help preserve it.

When we left the bridge we backtracked a little way to a highway that would take us back towards home. We stopped in the next town for a quick bite to eat at Wendy’s because neither of us had a big breakfast and we were both starving. We took a back road to bypass the town after that, and we decided to stop at the end of a road named, “Jim Day Road” to take a picture so I can post it and tag the Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Jim Day. We always joke when we pass that road that we should do that, so today we did.

Even though we got a late start, we ended up riding 206 miles today, and we topped the day off with ice cream like all good motorcyclists should 😉

I’m not sure if we will get to ride any more this week or not since there are higher rain chances the next three days, but we shall see. If not, we will be spending a lot of time in the garage working on the vintage bikes. I actually have a lot of progress photos I can share of those, so I’ll try to make another blog entry about that if I don’t have anything else to tell about this week.