An Early Return

By Wednesday morning it was obvious that the weather pattern in the park was to be rainy and cloudy for the foreseeable future, not exactly pleasant conditions for hiking or riding. We decided to join Bob & Beth and head home.

It was a pretty early start as we had to drive over Newfound Gap, through Pigeon Forge and then on to I-40 north. We hoped to get through the Pigeon Forge and Sevierville without any rain or too much traffic. It even rained a bit on the way over, of course. The traffic wasn't as bad as we've seen it in the past, but it was still the better part of two hours to get to I-40.

Bob had initially thought of going from Smokemont via Maggie Valley over to I-26, then up to I-40, a slightly shorter route. We did that once already with Speedy and the motorcycle trailer—in the rain. We never want that experience again. The steep, narrow, twisty road up and down to Maggie Valley is a delight on a dry day on a motorcycle, but hellish in the rain in Speedy with 3000 pounds of brakeless trailer behind it. With early rain in the forecast, we talked him out of it.

The initial part of the drive on the Interstate was pretty uneventful...until mid-Virginia. We were caught in a line on thunderstorms with torrential rain that went on for more than 50 miles. It go so bad at one point that we were going about 25 mph because it was coming down so hard we could see at all, not even flashing tail lights 100 feet ahead.

We finally popped out of the rain and made it all the way to Martinsburg, WV. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, one of our preferred overnight stops on long hauls as they allow us to stay over in their parking lot and it is a lot quieter than a Wal-Mart or Flying-J truck stop. We had dinner with Bob & Beth. They had decided that they would head over to a nearby Hampton Inn and retire in luxury. We started to set up to spend the evening, but it was still daylight, so we opted to move on to Pennsylvania and made it to the Carlisle Cracker Barrel, about 70 miles further on.

With an early start today, we zipped (as much as Speedy zips) through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts (the northern route via Hartford and the Mass Pike) and were home by about 4 pm. Another Speedy "Breakdown Cruise" is over.