Sunday, July 5th
After weeks of beautiful weather, Sunday started out with pre-dawn rain. The rain continued off and on all morning as Brian’s family packed up and headed out. We contemplated doing the same just before noon. But then we noticed it had started raining again, and harder.
So we covered up the bikes and helped John replumb the water filter under the house. When that project was done, we ate a quick lunch and put our gear on. John’s wife made us bbq sandwiches for supper. We packed those away with care and got on our motos. The rain stopped for a moment. They took pictures of us (as if they might be the last known photographs of us) and off we went at 1:00 pm.
We stopped to top off our gas tanks at the first gas station, then continued towards Roanoke and I-81. It started raining again. We took a “shortcut” and eventually found I-81, just before 2:30 pm.
Heading southwestward, we encountered on-again-off-again rain showers. This continued all day.
After getting past Knoxville, TN, and through a particularly heavy thunderstorm, we began to see clearing skies to the west.
We kept riding. It was frustrating to see blue sky ahead while still riding in the rain. At one point we pulled off at an exit and noticed a huge rainbow behind us!
We finally made it to Edgar Evins State Park at about 9:20 pm EST. This part of Tennessee is in CST, so we gained an hour.
The park’s campsites were pretty interesting. The wood-decked affairs jut out from the hillside and you drive out onto them. As you might expect, a wooden deck in the woods in the rain is a very slippery surface to try to pull a motorbike onto, or even walk on for that matter!
But we made it here! The bikes performed great. We held up too, despite the rain and sitting on the bikes for about 8 hours.
| Mileage | |
| Today | 435.2 |
| Trip Total | 568.9 |
