Broz, Yamadog, Yarbi, and I rode up to Sparta on Friday 5-24 for the event. After checking in around 1PM we rode some new-to-me roads between Sparta and the Mt. Rogers NF. They turned out to be the high point of the whole trip, for me anyway. They would be worth the trip up there just to ride them again! Anyone who wants them, email me, as I have created GDB routes for them.
They look like this:On Sat, the 4 of us rode NC/VA/WV route 16 as far as Welch, WV, for a "taste of coal country". Road good, coal bad. Then we headed back down 52 into Bluefield, over East River Mountain, and followed the scenic hiway until we decided to take VA 42 (The Blue Grass Trail) back over to connect into 16 between Tazewell and Marion, to make one last fling on that fun stretch of hiway, and back 16 to Sparta.
On Sunday, we started out (minus Yarbi who had to play boat captain later in the day) on the IV234 route, but ran into a washed out bridge on the "Valley" portion of the ride (the best part). Are we the only ones who took this route? I was really surprised no one had warned about this, since the "IV" routes account for about 1/2 the total rally routes and all of them go this way.
So anyway we backtracked and picked up the route at a spot further on, and had a nice ride from there.
Took a few pics---uploaded them all here--->>>>
http://pics.cofsta.com/thumbnails.php?album=31
Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 7:10 am