Bridal Veil Falls...Part Deux

I don't know if you ever experience this.  But I'm noticing the trend more and more.  It seems that I will go someplace new...and then revisit the same place a couple more times, with different groups over the next couple of months.

I first noticed it with Rock Eagle.  I went there on my first long distance solo ride (which I hadn't seen fit to write about since I didn't have this blog up yet).  Then took Mr. Oilburner there the following weekend when he came home because it was just so cool and he had to go.  And the a couple weeks later took a friend out there for the same basic reasons.

Standard staging area photo.

It has happened a couple more times throughout the last two years, so it wasn't surprising when our Meetup (.com) group came up with the Bridal Veil Falls ride.  Mr. Oilburner enjoyed last weekend so much that he was dragging me out to this one.  (Hard drag.)

It was the standard meet at IHOP, eat breakfast if so inclined, introductions to the new faces and oogling over each others rides.  But hop on the interstate, get started and we are a fluid group of 11 bikes weaving along the roadway. (No photos...sorry.  Just not a good vantage from halfway through the pack.)

We slab it up to Helen to make time for the fun spots later in the day.  Helen's stop is again the gas station, with a little more mud buildup from the heavy rains over the last couple of days.

Taking a last minute look over on the bike I notice the rear shaft seal is a little loose (as usual on this baby) and much sand seems to have accumulated.  Just what I get for the rain and dirt riding I have been putting her through lately.

Just a little bit of sand accumulation.

I grabbed some paper towels and wiped it away as best I could, then tucked the seal back in.  The shaft appeard pretty good under all that gunk.

We hit the road and roared through a country curving highway.  It was repaved last year and in excellent condition.  I could have done without the excessive speeding, and ultimately slowed down from the pack.  But the road was gorgeous!

We met back up into the pack, but were missing two members.  It seems they missed the turn onto this road.  While the leader backtracked to find them, a new leader was appointed to take us up to Clayton.  Thankfully the new leader missed a right hand turn and lead us up the twisties past Lake Burton.  Compared to Hwy 75, this is my next favorite.  And I was mightily pleased with myself and the speeds I ran it!  I managed to keep up with Jerrold!  (Saying a lot since Jerrold is extremely experienced, talented and on an automatic scooter!)  I smiled internally thinking that I couldn't wait to see the video.  Alas...one of those huge drawbacks to the GoPro when you can't tell which mode you are in or if the camera is recording or not.  While I thought I had been recording this journey, I wasn't.  Argh!!  I don't know if I will have the guts to run it at that speed again any time soon.

Literally, the end of the road.

We reached the end of the road in no time and pulled over to wait for the remaining pack.  Of the 9 riders in this group it was just 5 of us waiting.  We kinda think something might be up when 5 minutes have passed and the only bikes that have come up are not part of our group.  A couple more minutes and a 6th person has joined us, only to inform us that one of the group went down.  The rider was okay, the bike was upright, two of our group were with him and a passing truck had stopped.

We debated about turning around, but were discouraged from it due to limited stopping places and fragmenting our group even more.  All the while, two of us were trying to reach the leader, but mountains and cell coverage are sketchy at best.  With one person successful at reaching him, we are told to stay put and he will be here in about 5 minutes.

Five minutes pass and still no leader.  We give it another five.  Then another.  Turns out the leader was a little farther away then any of us expected, having found the two lost riders and just taking them up Hwy 75.  Our little group is now down to just two fragments.  Phone calls pass back and forth with the two helpers down at the spill site.  The downed bike is upright, the rider is fine, no scratches on him, the bike appears rideable except for the bent shift lever.  (Not cluthc lever.)  In an attempt to bend it back into a useable position the aluminum broke,  The McGyvers of the group, along with the good samaratins passing by zip-tied an allen wrench in place.  It would have worked, except the bike wouldn't start.  We of the lead group didn't know this until hours later.

Thinking that the situation was handled and the riders didn't want us back there, we looked forward and continued on with the journey.

Looking towards the road we would be taking.

We make good time to the falls again.  This time I am in a better mood and grab the camera.

This is for Bobskoot to show you just how close the road is to the fall.

I may have been in the mood to take time and pictures, but the group definitely was it and wanted to high-tail it into town for some overdue lunch.  It was a pizza joint, but the salads were extremely fresh.  Yes, we did have pizza too, but way to good to remember to take pictures of.

After lunch we scrambled towards home through more twisties, of course.  We headed from NC, cut across the corner of NE Georgia and ran into South Carolina.  Three states within 20 minutes.  Cool.  We made a last pit stop in South Carolina to try and cool off before merging onto I-85 and heading home.

I've posted a few more pictures over at Flickr.  I'll get the hang of riding and pictures soon.  Maybe.  While I didn't manage to take any video for the beginning of the ride Mr. Oilburner affixed the camera to his bike and managed to catch some video of me in the twisties.  Unfortunately the location was subjected to wind buffeting.  I will try to clean it up and post a few minutes.  I'm not sure if it is salvageable.  :-)

Stats:
274 miles
3 states and 1 waterfall
Abundant twisties and completely proud of myself in them.  I wasn't the slowest of the group!
Unfortunately one rider down that we learned had to be towed home.  One really good rider that volunteered to stay with him until the tow truck came.  (Wish we had known.  We would have gone home to bring the trailer back for him.)
Again, good friends, old and new

Riding by Waterfalls

We made plans to ride with a friend we hadn't ridden with for awhile.  We made the plans for Saturday.  And we went to bed way too late after my getting home late on Friday from Birmingham.  This made for one extremely grouchy BeemerGirl Saturday morning.

With the heat and humidity we all agreed it would be nicer to head out early and decided on an 8AM meeting point about 30 minutes from my house.  Eight?  Back up the clock here:

• 30 min to get there
• 20 min prior to lock the house, water the dog, gear up
• 30 min prior for showers and dressing and dashing around the house to gather clothing and gear
• 15 min prior to make sure the dog is up, fed and pilled in time for her morning constitution to take place so we don't have presents on the carpet

If I have to be there by 8, I have to get up at when??  6 AM??  I went to bed when??  1 AM??  This was gonna be difficult.

I woke up sore and a little stiff, but the warm shower worked that out.  The really good news was that the tush didn't quell at the sight of the saddle.  And for once I didn't need fuel immediately, so that meant I wasn't suiting up with that fine layer of sweat as lubrication to ride a mile down the road to half undress to fill the fuel tank.  Then fighting with gloves to convince them they needed to cover all of my hand, not just fingers and fleshy part where you are stuck because I am so sticky!!

No.  I was able to suit up with the requisite sweat and hit the road to try and cool off.  We reached the meet location and filled up there and we were soon underway, heading to points Northeast.  For speed and time we took the highway up and veered off to start the waterfall trail on some baby twisties.

I was doing good until the point we turned off the main road.  Mr. Oilburner asked if we needed a break and since I never really answered he took it as a sign to go forward.  But what actually happened was another 10 minutes down the road my legs started to feel cramped and were screaming at me to stretch them.  But it was too late.  We had hit the beginning of the twisties on these tiny little roads and Mr. Oilburner and Alex were off at a gallop.  Being a little befuddled and completely out of sorts I was approaching everything slower.  I was expecting some tiny farm animal or another to come bounding out of some yard or field at me.  And the turns?  Kudzu was covering the white lines of this tiny, barely two lane road.  Every turn showed me that I was working my way through this area at a turtle's pace compared to the two hares in front of me.  (I will use hare's because it isn't polite to say what I would really like to call them.)

So here I am, finally on Warwoman Rd.  And absolutely no opportunity to stop and document me...on Warwoman Rd!!  And the two knuckle heads are racing farther away by the second.  Then I realize I am on these wonderful roads in a gorgeous valley with great lighting.  Something Scooter in the Sticks would completely take advantage of.  Now I am losing ground AND missing out on this great opportunity to take pictures of my motorbike!!  Grouchy doesn't even begin to convey the mood that I am in.

Almost completely through the best part of the valley I decided to pull over and finally switch the GoPro on.  But it is really too late.  I still started the camera and continued on, but the scenery and lighting wasn't nearly as nice.

Grouchy feelings and ignoring querying over the scala Mr. Oilburner rightfully deduced that I was completely out of sorts.  Which kinda spoiled the road and scenery for a ways.  And it added nothing to the mood that the waterfalls were proving difficult to find. One just could not be found.  And the other one was only spotted by me, after passing.  To be fair, it was difficult to see and regularly had to be trimmed back for viewing.  But having to park in someones driveway was annoying.  Especially when they wanted out!

 You can only see this thanks to the trimming.

Avert thine eye's grandmother.  Here I am in one of my cranky moments. Mother, you can look since you taught me this when I was 4 y/o.  :)

Giving my best FYYFF pose and showing my feelings.

I know that I was a royal pain in the ass and appreciate that Mr. Oilburner and Alex put up with my bad temper admirably.  After a few minutes of walking around and seeing the fabulous waterfall I was a mite better and we continued on.  Only a couple miles down the road is the wonderful artsy town of Highlands, NC.  One of those places that tries to showcase local stuff with this wild flare and charge outrageous prices.  This did result in another dismount only minutes after sweating back into our clothes, but Mr. Oilburner promised me ice cream.

Once I was happily working my way into a scoop of coconut ice cream (YUM!) we started trolling the shops along main street.  We did all the window shopping we desired, with some strange looks from the proprietors.  See, this is supposed to be a nice, rich, vacation area and they expect people to dress appropriately.  We are these clean cut people walking along the street in riding pants and boots and helmet hair.  Oh well.  They'll get over it.  There wasn't too much we were interested in, or could afford, anyway.  Alex and I were enamored by the balancing metal yard art, but felt the 4 foot, metal pole wouldn't do well to transport by motorbike.

Now that I am stuffed with ice cream and mad at myself for giving in and eating it in the first place, we head back to the bikes to continue on.  With parking at a premium in this town motorbikes will tend to congregate together and we found this parked next to me...

Search and Rescue Harley Davidson.  No, I will not comment on what they might have been "searching" for...being that it was a Harley.

Just down the road is our second waterfall.  Well known in these parts, Bridal Veil Falls, actually spills over the roadway, giving vehicles access to drive behind the falls.  Of course, this makes for much lolly-gagging and gawking.  In my mind I had always pictured the fall on a side street or turn off from the main road.  In reality, it is right on the road with just a little lay of pavement to make the detour behind it.

  Lots of cars/people and I didn't want to mess with it.  This is the best shot we could get.  Mr. Oilburner didn't want a picture.

We hopped back into the groove and made our way to the next fall, Dry Falls.  No, they weren't dry.  But we didn't go see it owing to the new large decking and steps.  We assumed it was going to be a bit of a walk/hike.  We were not up for that in our riding clothes and the day was turning out to be warm.  Heading towards home later in the day I discovered that there was a jut to the walking platform that probably gave a good view of the falls that was within steps of where we had parked.  Just goes to show you how annoyingly impatient and stupid we can be.

On the road again...  This time to our final lookout of Cullasaja Falls.

Cullasaja Falls

One of the best parts of these falls/this area is the road.  Tiny, narrow, shear rock walls on your side, baby twisties out the wazoo, long views into tree-covered valleys.

Beautiful valley dead ahead.

Sheer rock cliffs hugging the road, and narrow lanes.

Just to give you a little scale of these rocks.

We did pass the falls parking area.  Not a problem considering the size of the parking area and the blind curve just ahead.  It was only a mile or so down the road and we were able to turn around.  Check out this deteriorating parking pad that will accomodate about 2.5 cars.

Parking pad for the falls.

My baby.

Unless you wanted to be a billy goat for a few hours and attempt the [illegal] path down to the falls there wasn't much to do here.  We sat around on the rails, stretched our legs, posed for the camera and just chatted and laughed.  People came and went and we waved to the myriad of bikes and bikers on the road passing us by.  Time to suit up, though, and a family with young children had just stopped.  The boys were about 5 and 7 and more enamored with the bikes then the falls.  One just wanted to be part of the scene and wished us a "good ride" as he hopped back to their car.  Cool kid.

The jagged heart and shininess caught my eye.

I later comprehended the leaf being strangled in the background.

We suited up and determined it was hot and time to point the bikes towards home.  But there were many good roads between here and home; including the border hwy between North Carolina and Georgia of 246/106.  This isn't one that you can easily speed on since there is slower traffic.  But hairpin turns and 10% downhill grades can make for some fun.  I was actually able to capture a little of this on video.  

The roads were wonderful all the way home.  We took most of the ones less traveled and were regaled with some interesting sites of summertime redneck activities.

The one bridge that did not post signs of "No Jumping or Fishing from Bridge." 

So what do people do?  Jump from the bridge, of course.

There are a few more pictures that can be viewed on flickr.

Stats:

279 miles

1 extremely grouchy BeemerGirl early in the day that didn't take many pictures

many baby twisties to play in, only one car on my side, this trip

Little River Canyon, Alabama

I really wanted to title this post "Beemers in the Mist".  For the first time grabbing a new electronic item I did not instantly mesh with it and learn it's intricacies through osmosis.  Therefore, I did not capture images of our group swirling through the mist along the quiet highways.  But what am I going on about, you ask?

Some old and new friends gathered to take a jaunt into Alabama and visit Little River Canyon.

It did live up to its name.  It had a river and was a little canyon.  :-)  All joking aside, it was very scenic and attractive.  The only drawback was the road rimmed the canyon and wasn't anywhere near the water.  Great for scenery as there was an overlook every mile!  Not so great for cooling off by lounging in the water.

The ride from Atlanta was mostly uneventful.  But you could say the premonition for trouble came at breakfast when the gentleman leading the ride turned to us and asked if we had input the route into our GPS'.  Any other ride of the year, with any other group of people and we would have already done precisely that.  Nothing against everyone else, but it is nice to have your own idea of where you might be going instead of relying (or forcing) everyone else to look after me.  This was one instance where Mr. Oilburner and I were completely willing to trust in others and just see where the roads lead.

To give a little background, two of the gentlemen in the group work for a BMW motorcycle dealership, and can snag any bike off of the showroom floor for a ride.  Which is precisely what these two had done.  However, neither of the bikes had been set up for GPS and the leader was running with paper maps.  Knowing that I usually keep my GPS updated was the reason for his earlier inquiry.  We had a chuckle that Mr. Oilburner and I were "unprepared".  We agreed that if it looked like he was getting a little "off-course" to let him know.

With this edict we set off towards the small hill country.  The clouds were low surrounding us, and I was happily thinking up my blog title with a great picture to back it up.  Alas, no go. Other events will have to suffice.

Our destination was a mere 100 miles from our meet location.  Not bad at all, giving us plenty of time to ride the canyon and stop at the overlooks.  We all figured that taking the highways would get us there rapidly and painlessly and we could play, rather then add an hour to the trip on back roads.  Mr. Oilburner and I were quite content to enjoy the scenery and empty highway until I began to comment that my GPS would rather we had turned right instead of left.  No matter how much I may hate to admit it, but there is more then just MY way to a destination so I sat back and didn't obsess.  Leader could stop if he wanted to.

I grew concerned as the sun was now directly covering my left shoulder instead of behind and slightly to the right.  Means our course was taking us south-southwest when we should have been traveling northwest.  Um...ok.  Given that there isn't one single straight stretch of road in Georgia this highway just might veer back northwesterly.  Another 5 miles and it was blatantly clear that we were headed due south and something needed to be done.

About this time Leader seemed to have his own concerns and pulled to the shoulder.  I coyly rode up and meekly asked if he believed he was headed in the correct direction.  He grinned and asked me if I could get us back to the right road.  No problem!  Have GPS will lead!  I headed away, making the others scramble to catch up as they were enjoying ribbing Leader.  I executed a perfect u-turn, feeling like I was pivoting on my cylinder head and putting all behind me to shame.  (I may be exaggerating this a little in my mind, but I was riding with a group of extremely experienced riders and wanted to look like I belonged there.) :-)  Mr. Oilburner assures me that my u-turn was quite respectable.

The first stop-light we hit to bunch up and a fellow rider asks me just how far out of the way Mr. Leader took us.  He rolled his eyes and laughed, storing away the "10 or so miles" answers for latter heckling.  I was basing the 10 mile estimate on the distance to our turn, thinking we would be on the correct road.  Later we determined that our little detourr was closer to 40 miles.  Mr. Leader didn't live it down all day.

But my route back to our objective was a great cutoff through small country lanes.  Much was said about the single-wide trailer homes with expensive trucks, motorcycles and cars along here.  My concerns with leading the group a little astray and not riding the roads fast enough were washed away when Mr. Oilburner expected that no one minded as they were all busy looking left and right and not paying attention ahead.  :-)

In short order we were back on solid ground and looking good to approach our destination in 20 miles.  Leader took back over as everyone felt he couldn't get us into too much trouble in that distance.  And our little time for chatter gave me the opportunity to play with my new gadget and actually get it working.

I broke down and purchased the GoPro HD.  I'm reluctant to create a permanent mount point just yet and made due with the suction cup on the tank trick.  What do you think of the pictures?

Our little group clustered at a map of our canyon ride.

We reach the canyon and have a grand time.  We pull into every turnout.  And they are all gravel.  Not a problem for the guys on the borrowed GS'.  I'm only apprehensive.  But Mr. Oilburner is riding that RT like it's a dual sport with knobbies.  He goes careening through the deep stuff, catching a little air.  I managed to get it on video and will have to share with you once I figure out how to post it.

Our merry band of bikes.

Gorgeous colors.

Mushroom rock growing in the middle of the road.  

Rude riders that we are, we just parked in the middle for photo ops.

It was wonderful actually stopping at overlooks, with actual landscape to look over.  Instead of the usual gas stations other groups take breaks at.  We would dismount, peel our gear off, oh and ah the scenery, sit and chat while the breeze cooled us off, then head on down the road to do all over again in another mile.  Great group of individuals that enjoyed laughing and relaxing.  The only drawback was having to peel our sweat soaked gear back on again.  But the alternative wasn't an option as we made smarmy remarks about all of the road-rash-waiting-to-happen-harley riders.  :-)  Seriously...can you imagine pulling your jacket back on, only to have the mesh liner stick to your arms and be pulled halfway out the arm hole near your hand?  Rough readjusting all of that! 

Stats:

293 miles

2 scenic "detours"

4 wonderful overlooks

1 HOT and STICKY day (temp gauges varied, but all agree it was near 100F)

1 missed section of the canyon to go back for

1 great ride with the worst miles to time ratio ever!  (293 miles in 12 hours door-to-door for us)

Can view a couple more pictures here.

Can you see where we took the major detour? :-)