Posting Routes Traveled

[rbentnail]

My wife hates motorcycles. She hates that I ride one and she hates even more that I own 2. But she understands that I rode for 20 yrs before we met and I wasn't going to give it up. That said, my 138,xxx mile '07 FJR took me from central NC to Maine, Mobile, Key West and Columbus. I still work so doing a 2 week trip is out of the question right now. Besides, I doubt I could find anyone to go with me. I went to Key West solo, and most of my forays in NC's park system were that way too. I tend to be less of a detailed planner and more of a spur of the moment, I have a free day kind of guy. I try to get in one or two long weekend overnighters but the guy I rode with for years moved away and gave up riding altogether. So now I get an urge, make & transfer a route, text a few locals and wing it.

[lkraus]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I tend NOT to ride other people's routes mostly b/c other people aren't as fickle as I when riding. It's not at all unusual for me to abandon a route completely b/c I'm tired or hungry or unexpectedly cold. Also I've been pretty lucky over the yrs just making routes at random with a couple of criteria:

1) avoid interstates but route basically parallel to them when possible. They can be useful;
2) 2 lane US Hwys are generally ok but see #1 when 4+ lanes are encountered.

That said, over the last 5 or 6 yrs the only reason I made routes for non-multiday trips was to achieve "my goal". See, after 15 yrs of heading into the North Carolina mtns I've ridden nearly every road there is, including most of the dirt National Forest Roads, so I decided to do something different. I decided to visit all of the NC State Parks on my bike. At the time there were 27 parks and I discovered very quickly the reason I had been to maybe one or two- they're at the ends of dead end roads. We pick loop routes, who in his/her/its right mind rides to the end of a road? So the trek began, 27 state parks from the ocean to the mtns. But along the way I found State Forests, Educational State Forests, State Recreational areas, Lighthouses, etc. So now the list is up to about 60 different places I've visited just in my own state (see pic below), which brings me back full circle to the first sentence. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because, as far as I can tell, I'm running out of places to go here. Riding a loop doesn't really interest me all that much anymore, I desire more. So all this comes down to:

what do you do to keep yourself amused or do you just ride a loop and go home?

I include Ohio nature preserves as stops on my day ride loops. I suspect these are similar to your Educational Forests. Typically, these are on land donated to the state, from about 10 acres up to 20,00 acres in size. They seldom have any facilities other than a parking area, an information sign with a map, and a couple short hiking trails. They make good spots to take a break and stretch my legs. Being in out of the way places, there is little traffic on the nearby roads and I usually have the entire area to myself. I've been to about 40 of the 140 official state preserves, and have also found a dozen or so operated by private conservation groups. Nearly all are free, but some require prior permission (obtained online) to visit. I try to stay off the interstates and four-lanes, so it is getting hard to get to new-to-me locations within a day's ride.