Bike Trip ~ June 2007

De and I rented a Harley last weekend while De's mom babysat William. We wanted to ride up through PA and see the country-side. So we rented a red Electra Glide Classic from the Frederick dealer and drove north on Rte 15. We stopped in Thurmont and saw part of the Catocin park (which De hadn't seen before) and then continued north to Gettysburg, where we took business Route 15 through Gettysburg and then Route 34 North to Route 81, where before we hopped on the highway we ate lunch at Cracker Barrell.

Then once we got on 81 east we exited onto Route 11. We were thrilled to discover the Appalachian Harley-Davidson dealer's 6th birthday celebration. There had to have been over 300 bikes there in the parking lot, De was nervous to park with all the bikes, but did a fine job. We got a chance to walk around and look at so many Harleys, De taking pictures of the really cool-looking bikes, the really expensive ones, and the funny ones.

We also walked through the HUGE dealer, who had at least 30 bikes for sale inside, and was packed with shoppers in the motorclothes sections. There was a quilt they were auctioning off, made of t-shirts from many dealers, which I told De I would make for him when when he got tired of wearing them... [although I still like my sister Emily's idea that we can all wear one of De's Harley shirts to his funeral, many years down the road].

We continued on Route 11 through several towns near Harrisburg until we got to Route 15 which joins with 11 and goes up the west side of the Susquehanna River. We enjoyed watching the river and people enjoying it for miles on end. I tried to take a photo of myself in the reflection in De's helmet... We saw lots of bikes along the road and even saw a young Amish couple with their horse and wagon, the wife holding a baby with a bonnet on... There were also some Amish teenage girls riding bicycles along the road behind them.

At about 4:00pm we realize we'd better work on heading home so we looked at the map and decided to take some back roads through the country and the mountains to head down (eventually) to Hagerstown. We took Route 35 west for a while, when we got to Mcalisterville we realized at about 5:00 pm that we'd better just head straight south and get home faster than the back roads were taking us [though they were full of farm views and lovely contryside that we thoroughly enjoyed], so we took Route 235 to Route 333 and then 322 back to Route 11/15 south.

We stopped at DQ along the river to rest our weary rear-ends (I had a blueberry cheesecake blizzard) and then headed straight home (going a little faster once we hit "the open road"). We had a wonderful day! De awakened the next morning to his first Father's Day with a bike waiting for him out front (though he had to return it).