George and Charlie Review the BRP Ride

Welcome to Ride & Rally with Fix My Hog. While the Blue Ridge Parkway part of this is fresh in our brains, we just came off of it last night, we wanna sit down and talk about what we like, what we didn't like. If you're looking to do this trip, this is the video clip that will give you advice on what Charlie and I learned. We went so far as to put some notes on an iPad. So the low-hanging fruit, Charlie, favorite part? God, that's a loaded question. I mean, I think every corner. We didn't go more than 100 yards without taking a corner. And if you're into carving and cornering, and don't let the speed limit scare you... 45 miles an hour. Is plenty fast. Yeah, it's a suggestion. I was warned by a number of locals that you do not wanna get a ticket on the Parkway. And I was warned briefly by- Charlie got flashers flashed at him. By the sheriff. I think for most riders, 45 isn't bad. Yeah, I pushed that a little bit, but it was a comfortable ride. And the other half of that is if it's busy, you're in traffic, you're gonna hit cars. On Saturday and Sunday, we had a lot of, not a lot, but a lot more traffic. And there's nowhere to pass. I mean, you go miles, and miles, and miles, there's nowhere to pass. There's never a straightaway long enough to see if it's safe to pass or not, so it was difficult that way. And probably 90% of it is double lined, no passing zone. Right. So for you to go back to that favorite part, was just kinda like everything, but probably least favorite part was when we got in these lines of cars, where if the car at the front's going 25 miles an hour, everybody's going 25 miles an hour. And some people are cognizant of that. They'll look in their mirror and see there's a line of cars, and they'll pull off at an overlook, even if they're not stopping at the overlook, to let everybody come by. And if you're watching this and you're going 25 miles an hour, please pull off at an overlook. Just pull in, drive through, and pull right back out. It doesn't take any more time, but it lets everybody else flush through. And keep movin'. So, same for me. I thought about this a lot, favorite part. Really when we got on the Parkway that very first day, and I was yelling into my helmet, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" And it was just... We're from Wisconsin and there are beautiful places to ride, but as soon as we got up into those mountains and we're doing these curves... You know what, I'll say this. We talked about this. Maybe my favorite part is that the Blue Ridge Parkway is not overdone in that there are some guardrails, there are some stone walls, but there's not huge metal guardrails to protect you from yourself. There are not chain link fences, there are not... If you make a mistake, it's gonna be bad. You're gonna go over an edge and go down hundreds of feet. But it's very organic-looking, the whole thing. It's great blacktop, but it's kinda like they just made this thing yesterday. And everything is left the way it was from the 1930s when they really did make it. So I like that, the very natural look of it. And then I'm with Charlie on we were very spoiled Thursday, Friday, there was nobody on the road. When we got into traffic Saturday, and then a little bit again on Sunday, that's a bummer 'cause you just get stuck. So if you're gonna plan this trip, and you wanna cruise, try and plan it for a weekday, not a weekend. Yeah, if you could do... So we did four days. If your four days could be Tuesday through Friday, that's gonna help you. Yep. One of the things we heard a lot about ahead of time was gas is a problem, there's no gas in the Parkway, gas is... I got a little panicky over this, I'm trying to plan every minute, you know? So I printed out a thing that shows where you can get off the Parkway to get gas. And at the end of the day, we have about a 200-mile range on our tanks, which exceeded the length of Parkway we could do each day, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. So, it's good to be prepared with the gas and keep your tank topped off when you can top it off, but it's not the panicky thing that some stuff I read on the interwebs was making it out to be. Right, right. So it's be cognizant, but don't... I saw people with 5-gallon gas cans in cars on one of those, the transporter shelf in their hitch. If they're off-road someplace, that makes sense, but to be on the Parkway, you don't have to go. Right. I mean, we topped off every morning, and we always had at least 1/4 tank a fuel, end of day. So this drives us into the mile-per-day thing. Parkway's 469 top to bottom, and we averaged like 110-ish. I mean, somewhere we broke 110, 'cause we hit 469. But somewhere around 110, 120 miles a day in a long day. So as a perspective, when we traveled Champagne to Ashland, Kentucky, that was a 420 mile a day, in one day, on the freeway. Comfort level for us, we were driving six hours or so every day. Yeah. Well, we took a half hour lunch, and we'd stop and take some pictures here and there, but we were on the Parkway six hours a day, at least. And that was comfortable. Yeah. And with that... For he and I, I've said this, we're both self-employed so we're spending some time in the morning catching up with work and that kind of stuff, getting about a 9:00 start every day, and rolling in someplace to stay overnight at 5:00 or 6:00 sometimes. Right. So, a pretty long day. And chilly in the morning. Sometimes you wanna wait for the sun to come up a little bit. I mean, some of those mornings, it was chilly. It wasn't horrible cold, but we dressed appropriately, we had the right gear with us so that we were comfortable riding. If you don't bring cold weather riding gear, you're not gonna wanna out on the Parkway until noon. 'Cause it's pretty tree covered, you're not riding in the open. So our advice is, at least on motorcycles, that range of breaking the Parkway into quarters, is a great, comfortable way to go. However, the qualifier to that is, researching. There's eleventy-billion cool things to see on the Parkway. So, you really wanna look into that ahead of time. It's very well established by mile post, 0 in the north, 469 on the south. So, you really... And we had pretty well nailed this down. On a day, our next stop is gonna be this, our next stop is gonna be this. And it could be 110 miles is too many miles for you if you wanna stop, and stop, and stop, and stop, and stop. We had decided early in the game, what this trip was really about for us was the experience of riding the Parkway. It was the motorcycle aspect. We saw a bunch of overlooks, we stopped at the trading post. So we stopped at cool places and we're happy with like- And we did a couple of short hikes, just small hikes. Yeah. We're happy with our level of stoppage. There are spots right on the Parkway you can park and hike 10 miles, which we didn't do. So you need to roll that aspect. One of the things I'm really happy I did, you can get an app on your phone, what a surprise, that's the Blue Ridge Parkway app. And it's got everything broken up into four regions of the Parkway. Within each region, it lists things to see broken down mile post, by mile post, by mile post. I paid a little bit extra. I think the app is free, I paid a small amount of money that allowed me to download it into my phone. So even when I didn't have a cell signal, I could look at it and say, "Our next stop is gonna be whatever, the Gorge at mile marker 369," or whatever it was. So I didn't have to worry about having cell coverage. That app was worth its weight in gold. And it worked well for us, because then you'd say, "We're gonna ride until 369." And then I know- If we got separated. Yeah, we're gonna hook back up at 369. So I'll get there and wait, one of us will get there and wait for the other to catch up or whatever. And it was nice that... "Where is he now? Am I ahead, am I behind?" It doesn't matter. We're gonna meet at that next mile marker. Every mile is a mile marker, so you can easily see. You know, "Oh, I gotta use the restroom somewhere." Well, I'm only five miles or 10 miles from the stop or whatever, so you can kinda gauge yourself. Yeah, the Visitor Centers that had bathrooms and picnic areas and all that. Everything is laid out on that app, I would highly recommend the app. Then you were talking to somebody and getting crowded times of year on the park, information about what times of year are the worst times. It was funny 'cause it was in the fall for the color run, for the fall leaves. He had down to the dates. It was October, I think it was October 9th through October 27th. He says that is the... And October 17th is the date. And it's like, well, where we're from, that changes by weeks, a string of weeks. Whereas he was like, "Yeah, the 17th is the day to be here, that's the color day." Or not. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I don't know if it's that accurate, but he was very... He was a local guy, so you know, he was here a lot. But it's good to be cognizant of that, call it mid Oct.. Well, the second half of October really is when the Parkway's gonna get crowded for the colors. And it gets very crowded, they're saying parking lot-ish. And then spring was flowers, which was- The spring bloom, which was, I think it was May to June. Early May to mid-June was the spring flowers blooming alongside of the Parkway. So you're driving down the magic carpet of... People talk about the road of dungeons, which would be crazy cool to see, but you're gonna deal... We haven't experienced this, this is an urban legend as it was told to us. And if that's your bag, and you're okay with what we talked about earlier of being in a line of cars where everybody's moving more slowly, 'cause there are more cars, and they're sight seeing more, then that's fine. But we're just telling you, what we learned is this time of year was pretty ideal. We're here third week of September and this is their slow season. So that also then knowing what we know now, we didn't have to do the... I didn't have to do the level of hotel planning that I did, we could've just flown by the seat of our pants day by day. I was just worried that like, boy, the last thing you wanna run into on a motorcycle is no place has a room. And at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 at night, you're just driving around 'cause there's marginal cell service. You're driving around trying to find a place to stay. So I had these pre-established stopping points, some of which we didn't use anyway, we jettisoned. An interesting thing about that is the first half or two thirds was, I think there was more places to get off the Parkway. And if you gotta go to a town or something, seemed like there was more on the first- More crossroads. Right, crossroads, and maybe a little more towns on the first half of the Parkway than the second half, just because of the sheer cliffs of it all. Yeah, so it's another thing of us is this, or whatever we were gonna talk about is if you're choosing sections, do your research, back to that. But we really liked yesterday's ride and kinda the latter part of the day before, which is the lower third or so of the Parkway. That's where we crossed that highest point, that 6,400-foot elevation. Mount McKinley. Or Mitchell. Oh, Bob Mitchell, yeah. Cousin. Yeah. Where was I going with that? Oh. So when you're planning, if you decide because of the mileage you are going to cover, you can only do portions of it, we really liked the southern third of it. And we had initially planned on jumping off at Asheville and then so many people had said, "Geez, that stretch, really Asheville to Cherokee is the best-looking part." And finish it. And we did, we finished it, and we also did the whole Parkway. We did the whole thing and it's a feather in our hat. I'm puttin' the sticker on my bike today. So the other thing is, is if you are not driving here but you want to come and experience this and you're gonna fly in somewhere, and come rent a car, or a bike, or whatever you're gonna do and run the Parkway or a part of the Parkway, Charlotte was very close. That's a big city, you can get to easily from anywhere in the country. And you're right there, you're only an hour off the Parkway. So you could get to Charlotte, fly into Charlotte and you could be on the Parkway. That was a great section of the Parkway as well. Yeah. So easy in and out if you wanna do a short piece of it, or you're coming from California and going on a ride. And another thing we've talked about now that we know what we know. So the Parkway was nice, it was low-hanging fruit. When we knew we wanted to come... This started with, "We wanna come to this part of the country, now what?" You can Google like, cool motorcycle roads in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, whatever, and you'll get hits on that. Grandfather Mountain is one where there's riding up there. But in the end, the Blue Ridge Parkway became, "Well, why do all this research when everybody talks about how cool this is end-to-end?" However, what we know now is you could do that and that makes it easy 'cause everything is laid out, the overlooks are there, there's all sorts of information about it. But you can also come here, do some daily excursions on the Parkway, but also just get off in the mountains. There are tons of state highways, two-lane roads that are just in the mountains. Right, right. And with that, I would say this Garmin Zumo XT that I'm using was pretty indispensable for that. You don't have to rely on a cell signal 'cause it's GPS. A couple times we looked at that and said, "Well, if we jump off, can we loop back around and get back on the Parkway?" And you can tell yes or no. Another way to look at this would be, don't feel like you have to be married to the Parkway end-to-end, if you wanna come here. You could use the Parkway, but then also do lots of stuff off the Parkway. Yep. So I think overall, it was great. The weather helped. We had great weather, we got so lucky with this. Driving this in cool, sunny days made it wonderful. Doin' all this in the rain would've... 'Cause we were on a timeline, we had to get end-to-end, so we would've had to keep moving. But yeah, I would do the park. I would highly recommend the Parkway for anybody. Yep. Even a section, you don't gotta do end-to-end. Just pick a spot, pick a section where it's got things that you wanna see, and then go to that section and work that. There is no bad section. No. There is no, "I wish I'd done this or that." The whole thing was fantastic. And I'll come back again, probably not on a motorcycle. Like Charlie said, get into Charlotte, rent a car and get here. And there's a bunch of really cool hiking around the Linville Gorge and Mount Mitchell. And I really wanna get off the trail on some good hiking trails. You know, off the roads onto some good hiking trails. And you were talking about coming back with your kiddos. Right. I'm gonna bring 'em down here, we're gonna do this again, and then do just a section. I think we'll hop out of an area and do day excursions from there, and maybe do one or two of those, and just launch off of that and come back. You don't gotta worry about getting from A to B, just get there and go play. Yeah. And then decide what you're gonna do. And I did mention a little bit about it... I think that the southern third was a lot less wildlife... Deer was a big concern. We saw quite a few deer on the first- Yeah, really the first two days we probably saw, maybe saw about eight deer crossing the road. Right. And then- Then one bear. One bear. And so we were worried about that, where yesterday, it was sheer cliff and sheer wall pretty much. Not as much forest off the park where you could see in the trees, it was a lot more sheer. I personally didn't feel- That's our perception is, the wildlife threat on the road. Yeah, that's- It was significantly less on the lower third. Don't quote me or get made at me. Didn't come close to that. Yeah. But that's kind of what we gleaned from the nature of the road. And we didn't see any wildlife right yesterday. Right. And we saw a boatload of it the first few days. Yeah. Cool. Well, so at the end of the day, he would do this again, I would do this again. Yep, yep. We had a blast. The places to stay were wonderful, people were so nice. Yeah. So everybody is chatting it up and giving recommendations about where they think you should go, and things to see. The overall experience was wonderful. Yep, I think it was fantastic. And bountiful, yes. All right, see ya.