Here is my report:
I made a plan to do the BRP over the Columbus Day Holiday weekend and camp along the way. All 469 miles from Waynesboro, VA to Cherokee, NC. I needed to do this as a test trip for my 2011 California Adventure. I enlisted two friends to come along with me. One would ride with me from Knoxville and do the whole trip and another from Maryland would meet us at the first campground and ride halfway with us and then go home.
Me and Kyle left from Lenoir City early on 10-9 and traveled up Interstate 75 to 81. We had to make a bunch more stops than needed for me because the FZ1 Kyle was riding was far more limited in range. Here is us stopped in Wytheville, VA because the FZ1 needed gas and it's rider had to poop.
All that Virginia interstate riding was terrible, luckily we were using the Sena SMX 10 headsets that I purchased and had a good time entertaining ourselves with the usual male banter and berating cagers we passed. We finally made it to I-64 and into Waynesboro and finally the start of our real trip, the BRP.
As you can see I was super excited to be here.
It started out with some sweepers and it was much more enjoyable than the stupid interstate, we had a good time making fun of a lot of the signs along the way, the BRP has some hilarious names for places and signs for our immature brains. We got our first real treat of scenery and ravens roost not far from the start. So we stopped and got a few "oh pretty pics."
Don't want to fall off of it. It might hurt.
Well we get back on the bikes and make our way to MM 27 and down the road to Montebello Campground where we will spend the first night.
Yes, it is that full and yes it was loud all night.
It was nice to be under trees instead of being in a hotel though.
We decided to hold a rave for all the rednecks.
It was a loud night though. We had our neighbors start having a domestic dispute with the woman yelling at the man and then the man telling us it's always his fault. They were a lot of fun. He didn't know how to start a campfire and so he asked us and we told him to use pine needles and twigs as kindling and he promptly told us "he is not a woodsman." They also started having a long conversation at 1AM, 3 feet from my tent. Luckily a fellow redneck somewhere in the campground screamed at them a few times telling them "WHAT PART OF QUIET TIME DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND!" til they went to sleep. They lost their dog at 3AM and chased it through my tent area too. They were great people. There was also kids screaming for no reason all night. I do not recommend this campground. Only positive I got to say is I got a hot shower this night, because the food sure did suck.
Yeah, we made eggs in the same dutch oven we burnt some bacon in. They look nasty, but weren't too bad.
We took off out of that redneck nightmare early on 10-10 and were treated to this view not far down the BRP.
It all started blending together after awhile though.
We saw a sign for the natural bridge (we were bombarded with this all the way up interstate 81) and thought we would check it out. There was a nice twisty asphalt road to the natural bridge, so it wasn't too bad of a detour. We found this guy waiting on us when we got there, he looked like he meant business.
We didn't go to the natural bridge, it cost money and we were not interested after seeing the prices and the line to get in.
On the way back to the brp, I tried to take a different route to get back on, but it led right into a gravel road. It was a great little surprise find that was twisty and fun.
Kyle on the FZ1 with PP 2CTs was not amused.
We got back on the BRP and it sort of leveled out and was kinda boring Virgina roads and we didn't really stop much or see anything great in this lower section of Virginia. So I don't really have pics of it. Eventually the FZ1 needed gas again, so we made a little pitstop in Floyd, VA.
We stopped in the dumpy section, apparently there was a much nicer part if we would of kept going a little bit as we found out on the way back to the BRP.