Day 4

Up early and on the road again by 8:00am. We actually spent the night in Ashland, KY...just short of Huntington, WV...because the first two or three hotels we called had no rooms. We chose to stop short by about 15 miles. The hotel was nice enough and we found a good sports bar and grill to get some food. For a relatively small town, the place was pretty good.

Our route today took us through Huntington, then Charleston at which point we turned a bit south to follow the Kanawha River down to a little town called Rainelle. Every year the town folks shut down everything and spend the whole day cheering on the bikers rolling through town.

However, before we got to Rainelle, we drove along some very winding and beautiful roadway. Off to our right was the Kanawha River dotted with coal mines and power plants here and there. About half way through this twisting highway...Hwy 60 I believe...we stopped in Glenn Ferris where we saw the Kanawha Falls. This is where the Kanawha River goes over some short...perhaps 3-4 feet tall...water falls. It is quiet beautful and a very popular spot for bikers to take a break. We all took pictures of the falls as well as ourselves with the falls in the background.

Once leaving the falls, we once again got on the twisting road for a few miles until we came to a Harley Davidson dealership. Seems to be out in the middle of nowhere but I'm betting they do a great business with the bikers that travel the road there. While we were enjoying the shiny new motorcycles and buying shirts, the large contingent from California caught us and we had to wait in the parking lot for 15-20 minutes for them to pass.

After seeing what we thought was the end of their group, we entered the roadway...with the help of one of the HD employees who stopped traffic coming the other way...we jumped in. A few minutes later we realized that what we thought was the end of the line was only a break so here we were stuck in the middle of the California group.

Earlier in the day...just before getting to Charleston, our sister Chapter in Houston, Chapter 2, caught us so we stopped for fuel and joined up together. We thought it would be a nice showing to have 35 bikes from Texas versus only 6 but because we got caught in the middle of the California group, the whole thing went to pot. Later in Rainelle the California group's road guards chased us out of the line because "we had not register for the ride" as one of their group. This made a couple of the guys very angry as we thought the whole ride to the wall was about Rolling Thunder. Anyway, after talking to some of the road guards over lunch we understood why they were so aggressive. Apparently, all along the route from California they have riders try to sneak into the line and it's a big liability thing.

We finally pulled into Staunton, VA around 5:30pm and boy were ever so ready to be there. It was a long day, even though the miles driven was significantly shorter. We even had to drive through the rain along the way...for the first time.

Speaking of miles, if anyone is interested, I have driven a total of 1,612 miles so far. Tomorrow's 150 miles or so sounds pretty good. Due to the truck and trailer following us having a hard time with the mountains, we are going to skip the ride through the Virginia mountains and go directly into DC using the Interstate. We plan to leave around 9:00am, hopefully beating the 5,000 man California group...we'll see.

Tomorrow, we'll be in a nice hotel in downtown Alexandria. I'm hoping to find a whirlpool for my tired body and a washing machine. See you tomorrow night.