Day 12 - The End

Our journey has come to an end.  We logged over 4000 miles and loved every minute of it.  Yesterday, we rode from VA beach down through the Carolinas back to Evans, GA.  We were beat that day from a lot of interstate riding.  We really plowed through the interstate to get home.  Our only main stop was South of the Border, which is on the South Carolina border line.  It’s a very dumpy tourist attraction that is a bit of an eye sore, but still a fun experience.  We arrived home and my mom had prepared us a nice warm home cooked meal, something we hadn’t had the whole trip.  After dinner we washed up our bikes and I think they cleaned up pretty well!  There were more bugs splattered on my bike than I could even begin to count.  Overall, the trip was a great success.  We saw LOTS of cities and places and talked to many, many people along the way.  My impression of Canada is very good and I’ll def be going back.  Montreal is a really cool city that I hope to spend more time in as well.  Thanks for following along with this blog.  Our adventures are usually a yearly ordeal, so be sure to stay tuned for next year, which maybe Alaska and the arctic circle.  We may through in some weekend trips here and there or just updates about new motos or motorcycles in general. 

Safe riding to everyone out there and go look for adventure!

Best,

Hale Moto (Kyle, Ken, Blaine)

Day 10 and 11

Well, I had just written this whole post and the connection decided to time out, great.  I’ll try to sum it up again.  We started in West Warwick making our way across all of Connecticut. The drive into NYC was hectic, but as expected.  We stopped at Cafe Moto for lunch, meeting up with good friends Pat and Casey.  After lunch we headed to the Brooklyn Brewery for a tour and sampling.  The history is really cool and it’s crazy to hear they had a tiff with the Mafia when they first started.  We had an early dinner at the Meatball Factory - highly recommended.  My friend Oscar met up with us after and kindly offered his floor for us to crash on.  We garaged our motos for the night and went out for drinks with Oscar, Casey, and Pat at a German bar for Pat’s moving to Portland party.  The next morning we headed down to Times Square and was able to snap a few quick pics.  We blasted through New Jersey, paying to ungodly turnpike tolls and crossed the Delaware bridge and then into Maryland and into Virginia.  We crossed the Chesapeake Bay bridge which was incredible and was my first time.  It’s amazing that we were riding right above the Atlantic Ocean.  We crossed over VA beach and stayed in Suffolk for the evening.  Can’t wait to be home as this is the last leg of the trip and not much left to see.  Total Mileage 460

Hale Moto

Day 8 and 9

We made it to Rhode Island!  The past few days have been a pleasant ride down I95 (as pleasant as you can get on an interstate paying the Maine turnpike tolls!)  The temperature is a cool 68F riding and you couldn’t ask for better temperature on a motorcycle.  We left Nova Scotia on Day 8 and rode across all of New Brunswick.  Our destination for the end of day 8 was Bar Harbor (or, if you are a local ‘bah haba’).  New Englander’s have 1 letter less in their alphabet - the R.  We had a nice dinner on the harbor at sunset.  This was my first time eating a lobster and it was great!  A little messy, but I liked it.  It took me a minute to get used to tearing open a crustacean for the meat.  After dinner we walked around through some gift shops.  Bar Harbor is very touristy, but still a cool little place.  We camped that night in Acadia Natl park which was a treat.  We spent the next morning on the top of Cadillac mountain over looking the Acadia natl.  After the park, we jumped on I95 and headed south through Augusta Maine and ended our 9th day outside of West Warwick RI.  We met up with my old college friend, Janna, and had a great dinner over the local IPA brew and a killer pizza.  A lot of the locals had just recently had their power turned back on after being out for a week from the hurricane. 

We are hoping to head into Brooklyn today and stop at Cafe Moto for lunch.  Maybe some NYC shenanigans are in order for later today and tonight.

Hale Moto

Day 7

Finally our day to relax from 10-12 hour riding days.  We spent all day in Halifax, near the port and board walk.  The weather was beautiful and the sun was shining.  We had a break with a good brew, Alexander Keith’s.  After that we decided to take a sail boat ride on Silva to see Halifax from the sea.  It was a nice cool ride and very cathartic.  I could learn to take up sailing someday.  We went to the Citadel afterwards and toured the garrison.  It was cool to see how the land was protected, but there was never a fight there.  Word has it the garrison was so heavily guarded, armies avoided trying to attack.  We rode into Peggy’s cove which is about 20 miles south of Halifax at sunset.  We got to see sunset on the rocks and see the lighthouse at the cove.  Total Miles: Less than 50

Word has it Blaine is diagnosing his bike problem and it maybe the ignition coils!  We could have picked some up at autozone if that is in fact the problem :P

Hale Moto

Day 6

Today was a good day of riding.  We made it from Bangor, Maine all the way to Nova Scotia.  We passed through New Brunswick  on our way.  The scenery was nice, but nothing really to brag about.  It remind me of the foothills of north Georgia, but without the mountains.  There were some hills and a lot of road work.  I think they do road work when it is warm because the winters can be harsh.  We averaged about 75-80 mph on the interstate the whole way.  We have talked with a lot of interested folk at gas stations, some locals that give their advice on what to see and do.  We were told by a lot of people to see/ride the Cabot trail, which is the Highlands of Nova Scotia, but I don’t think we will have time to do it since we have 6 days to comfortably get back to Georgia.  We camped at a state park camp ground over looking the Atlantic shore which was beautiful.  The mosquitos were so incredibly big and they were on the hunt for blood.  Total Miles: 450

Blaine - how are ya doing back at home?  Hopefully, you’ll get that r90 back up to speed again!

Hale Moto

Day 5

Today was a good, but long day.  We started out near Cornwall, Ontario and made our way through Quebec.  It’s certainly a little disorienting when you are in a French speaking province, as all the road signs and buildings are in French.  We made it to Montreal and parked in a small district that I don’t remember the name of.  We ate at a small deli for lunch and realized we hadn’t planned anything in Montreal.  So we got on our bikes to go see the ‘old’ Montreal, but somehow we managed to stay on the interstate, missing the old montreal and kept going.  We were in a bit of a rush to stay on schedule as we decided we needed to be in Halifax by day 6.  We continued along Quebec until our border crossing back into the USA at Vermont.  After spending about 5 minutes in Vermont, we passed into New Hampshire.  The mountain range and drive through it was beautiful!  Shortly after, we passed through Maine and rode on a lot of pig paths and twisties until we found a highway.  We made it into Bangor Maine around 8 30, completely exhausted and very chilled.  Total Mileage 468

Hale Moto

Day 3 and 4

What a crazy past few days this has been.  Sad news is that Team Hale moto lost a member - Blaine.  The story - we began day 3 normal, around sunrise at 7 30am.  We started chugging along down the road in West Virginia mountains heading towards Eerie Pennsylvania.  Blaine began to have power loss in his bike throughout the morning.  We pulled over and he try flushing his carbs with carb cleaner, as we thought it was a fuel problem.  That would fix the problem for a little bit, but then the problem persisted, grounding us right outside of Eerie, PA.  We worked on the bike for about 2-3 hours but came to the harsh reality that Blaine wouldn’t be joining us for the rest of the trip and would need to find a way home.  Ken found a Ford f150 at the airport down the road and we went to pick it up.  We found a hillside and managed to load up the poor r90 for it’s trip back home to Atlanta.  We were very, very sad to loose Blaine and his r90 as he was an integral part of our team, representing the historic aspect of BMW and it’s cross country endeavors.  We said our goodbyes and Ken and I headed on towards Niagara.  We ended up camping at a KOA near Lake Eerie that night.  The next morning we could feel strong winds and wandered if it was coming off Lake Eerie or if the winds were from Hurricane Irene.  We began to make our way towards the Niagara Falls and finally arrived in the late morning.  The Falls were incredible and everything we hoped they would be.  It’s amazing to see how small you are in relation to mother Nature’s full force.  We hung around for a little over an hour and decided we should head on if we were going to make Montreal.  We headed up 401b through Toronto.  I thought Atlanta traffic was bad, but Toronto is pretty rough… As the day progressed, it began to get colder and darker, as we were heading into the outer bands of Irene.  Once it got too dark above us, we decided we should seek shelter before we got into a situation that would be bad.  I’m too tired to calculate our total miles for the past few days, so hopefully these pictures will keep you entertained.

Trekking along and missing Blaine

Team Hale Moto