This is one of a series of posts about riding the Mid Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route with a couple of my old motorcycle friends.
One of my rules for traveling in the southeast United States is that there have to be breakfasts at Waffle House. In general, I try to avoid chain restaurants while traveling by motorcycle, but my fondness of the yellow-and-black signed diners with their hash browns and raisin toast always draw me in. So when Howard, The Bishop, and I got started on the Mid Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route (MABDR), breakfast on the first day had to be at Waffle House.
We spent the night in Abingdon, VA where there was a convenient Waffle House for breakfast.
It’s always a big decision between a waffle and raisin toast at WH!
Stages 1 and 2 of the MABDR were dominated for me getting my sea legs back for riding on gravel and dirt roads. Many of the roads were fast, compacted gravel while there were sections that had lots of embedded rocks. The toughest section involved riding over a freshly graded fluffy dirt road — some of the hardest riding of the trip. The scenery was great when we broke out of the woods. Our ride took us from the start in Damascus to our motel and a fine fish dinner at the Fatback Soul Shack in Christiansburg, VA.
A panoramic view from Stage 1 of the MABDR somewhere in Virginia. Click on the image for a full-sized photo.
Stage 2 was another fantastic day of dirty riding, with the highlight being the famed Tub Run Road. We arrived relatively early in Covington, a town that seemed sadly in decline We had ice cream from a shop that was going to be closing the next day, but there was a nice local Mexican restaurant for dinner.
Your author on Stage 2.
Places like Tub Run Road are why we traveled so far to go riding.
Stage 3 was now next on our agenda. It would be the longest day of riding of the trip, it would have multiple water crossings, and we would encounter the challenge of having multiple trees down across the road.
You can find the whole story of our trip here, once all the sections have been posted.