Monday morning at 7:30am my wife Sami and I pulled out for our trip up to St.Mary’s Pa. This was her first overnight bike trip and she was a little nervous, but also excited. We made a quick stop in Indiana Pa for breakfast and to finalize our route. We wanted to avoid highways unless absolutely necessary and really wanted to spend as much time on nice back roads and dirt roads as we could.
The ride up 286 was nice. Good road conditions, twisty, and nice scenery. We stopped in Curwensville for a coffee and I said “That was a nice road”, to which Sami replied “Yeah but I’m ready for some dirt!”
At the convenience store “Snappy’s” in Curwensville:
Road Crew or kids had some fun with the sign:
After that we headed on to Caledonia Pike. We stopped at the beginning, and I asked Sami if she wanted a picture of the sign. “Nope, because it’s not a dirt road like you said it was” (in her defense she was smiling as she said this). Of course it quickly turns into dirt and she was happy.
First stop along Caledonia:
Sami’s “gadgets” for the trip:
We continued on and when we came to this area I insisted we take a picture since it seems like the place to take pictures if you ride this road ;D:
We saw a few deer, Sami had a close call with a suicidal grouse, but no incidents. It’s a fun road and a lot of side roads peel off. We decided we would explore some of these on the ride back the next day.
Entering the hotel address at the end of Caledonia Pike:
We continued on to St.Mary’s and ate then checked into the hotel. After we got unloaded, cleaned up and took a little rest we headed back out. We stumbled upon Parker Dam and found some nice dirt roads. Sami had a close call with three whitetail deer. We headed back to the hotel right before dark. Sami decided she was enjoying riding the dirt roads so much that we canceled our tour at Straub Brewery for the next morning and planned to just ride all day instead.
View of the bikes from our room:
You can’t stay in St. Mary’s without at least partaking in some of the local brew. Mmmm beeeer:
We headed out the next morning around 8:30. We decided even though it would be late we were going to head over to the Elk viewing areas in Bennezette. We saw one small elk and that was it.
This is where it went over the hill, but we missed getting the actual animal in the shot, haha:
From there we just explored back roads trying to find good dirt roads to ride. Sami proved she is a very good navigator. One time I thought for sure we were lost only to come right out on the road we started on, very impressive.
We rode some more dirt roads and ended up coming back out at Parker Dam on the back side. We headed over to the concession stand for lunch but the lady working was so old I think she was named dirt, and after 15 minutes and she was still waiting on the same person, we headed back to the bikes. As I was putting on my jacket I felt a sharp stab in my left side. I said “Think I just got stung”, Sami came over to look and the bee was still in my jacket (a large bumblebee). It then decided it wanted to climb my back, still inside my jacket, and then chill inside my helmet with me! After quickly taking my jacket and helmet off I got the bumblebee out of my helmet. I dispatched the assailant and then we suited up and headed out.
We hit the dirt roads again and made our way back to the start of Caledonia Pike for the ride back. We happened upon a flock of ducks just walking on the road. We had to slowly ride through them while they quacked and gave us the business for bothering them, haha. I guess I should point out here that I always have her lead on our rides. I like to be able to keep an eye on her in case she gets into trouble, that way I can more quickly be there to help as I am bad at not checking my mirrors often enough when people are behind me. Anyway, I was doing what I call the “yoyo technique” where I back off and let Sami get out ahead and then speed up to catch back up. It staves off boredom; I often do this regardless of who I am riding with. One time I did this and came around a corner pretty hot to find Sami stopped in the road. I narrowly missed ramming into her bike as I skidded to a stop! I looked up and saw something large and black go off the road. Here an adult black bear was crossing the road, saw her the same time she saw it, and they both stopped and had a stare down trying to decide what to do. The noise of me speeding around the corner scared it off. That was the first black bear she ever saw and obviously it was an exciting experience as it was very close, maybe 15 yards. We continued on and she encountered another suicidal grouse (maybe the same one from the day before) and we saw 3 nice whitetail bucks before the end of the road. We also explored some of the side roads and I think you could spend a whole day just in that area riding dirt roads.
As I was preparing to take a picture of the sign at this end of Caledonia Pike Sami proclaimed: “I don’t want to go back to work, I just want to do this every day, all day!” Yeah I think I created a monster…
Final mileage back at home for the two days was 439.2. Not a lot of miles but the most she has ever done in one trip on any type of bike.
Side note: I put over 600 miles on my WRR between the ANF ride Saturday and this trip and that seat was worth every penny. The WRR had a high of 70mpg which I was impressed with that until I calculated the mpg of the 1997 DR200SE Sami rides. The highest for the trip was 91.6mpg! That is not a typo. Granted that was 30-40mph on dirt roads but that is still pretty impressive. Commuting from our house to Indiana she usually gets around 84mpg on a mix of backroads and highway.
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