Day two dawned cloudy, but definitely better weather than Kenosha the day before. It appeared from the weather reports that we had gotten ahead of the storm, and it had turned north while we were headed south, so it appeared that we were going to stay dry. After breakfast compliments of the Hampton Inn, we headed outside to pack up the bikes and get moving. It was a good bit warmer this morning than the day before, and we were surprised to find that there was no morning dew to wipe off of the bikes. We dispensed with the rain gear, only to see a few raindrops on the bikes. Fortunately, that was all it was, and we stayed dry today. We realized now that we were able to see the surroundings of the hotel in daylight that it was somewhat strangely located. It was literally in the middle of a cornfield! There was a grain elevator across the street, and a cell tower behind it, but as far as you could see in nearly all directions, it was corn, grain elevator, corn, grain elevator. We were both anxious to get away from the cornfields and into some more interesting riding.
Also, September 19th is the annual observance of "Talk Like a Pirate Day" so I posted all of my Facebook status updates whenever we stopped in some form of Pirate speak.
We headed out on US 421, and picked up State Route 48, which skirted us up north of Cincinnati. It was a nice rural road, with some curves and even a few hills. Chris and I were both amused by the sign when we came onto a part of the road which warned trucks not to use the road due to steep hills and dangerous curves. Sounds like fun! Outside of Cincinnati, we picked up I-71 to get to US-35. 35 is still a divided highway most of the way, but it goes through some cool towns along the way. We stopped in Chillicothe, OH for lunch, for my first experience eating at the Steak 'n Shake. Burgers were good, shakes were better.
From there, we hit State Route 327, which eventually connected to US-50, and both were really great roads. This was really the first of the nice curvy, mountain roads we were looking forward to on the trip. A brief stop for fuel and rest in Coolville (how could you *not* stop there??), and we were on our way again.
From there we caught State Route 47 in West Virginia, which is an amazing road. I found it using this website, and it is strongly recommended for both the scenery and the drive! One thing I will say about the late Senator Byrd and his ability to bring home the pork... WV's roads were in a completely different class from the comparatively awful roads in Indiana and Ohio - almost no frost heaves, and nice smooth pavement even on these little secondary two-lane roads. 47 ended at US-119, which took us into our landing point for the night, Weston, WV. We stayed at a Comfort Inn there that was obviously a converted motor lodge of some sort - still had the external entrances to the rooms, but they had built a new building in the front to house the check-in and breakfast area. We went to the plaza next door to the hotel and grabbed some "Italian" food from a place called Genos. The food was passable, the beer was cold. I ordered an Italian Sausage sandwich, but instead of your standard tube-shaped sausage with peppers, onions and maybe some tomato sauce in a bun, this had sliced sausage, peppers, onions, and the entire thing was covered in cheese, like a pizza, but on a sub roll. It wasn't bad, but definitely not what I was expecting. We arrived a good bit earlier tonight than we had last night, so we were able to get to bed earlier in preparation for an early departure the next morning so that we could get into Richmond in the early afternoon.
I can honestly say that a lot of the roads we traveled today more than made up for the relatively boring, tiring freeway slog that we did the day before.
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