Ride Report - Pennsylvania Bound over the Labour Day weekend

[Rotten_Ronnie]

Willie had purchased a new-to-him 2004 Honda ST1300 and wanted to head south for a three day loop into Pennsylvania and back, so I rolled out my Bandit and prepped it for the trip. We'd start from my place stoopid early on Saturday morning and head south towards Renovo, overnight in Muncy, then head back up and stay the night in Watertown NY before heading for home.

It was a great ride, marred only slightly by some cloudbursts through New York State on our third day, but then touring and not planning to get wet is a bit of a comedy, isn't it?

Here's our day 1 route which featured heavily on PA Route 144 through the Susquehannock State forest, a marvelous route that I've done many times in the past, and so long as you stay alert for deer, bear and wild turkey, brings nothing but a smile to my face.

Next time Willie leads I'll make sure we bypass Oleans traffic by skirting around it entirely, but we made the most of the gaff and stopped in at the KA-BAR museum and factory outlet.

Jersey Shore?! Let's go!!!

PA 144 South

Hyner View State Park, a real blast riding up the mountain on blacktop lane and a half roads with wicked hairpins!
Paste this into Google Maps and check it out: 41°19′36″N 77°37′27″W

We spotted some fellow Canadians on their own ride... Anyone we know?

And some of the flood damage that we'd heard so much about, and for that matter, scrapped our earlier plans for Vermont in favour of Pennsylvania:

A baseball field:

There are more maps and pictures here:
http://rottenxxxronnie.blogspot.com/2011/09/pennsylvania-bound.html

Cheers!

 

[kiterider]

Crap. I wanna do this but can only do Sunday and Monday

 

[Rotten_Ronnie]

Crap. I wanna do this but can only do Sunday and Monday

Change up the route.Here's the route I'm doing this weekend over Saturday and Sunday. http://g.co/maps/nf8bh800kms to Holland NY, then say three hours back to Toronto. If you shorten the loop somewhat and try for 600 per day you'll have a great ride and won't have to worry about police. Leave it as is and be careful in New York, but Pennsylvania has no reciprocity, so a ticket is cash out of pocket with no speeding ticket on record. At least it was that way in 2007 when I got a reminder that I ride a bit fast. If you were to ride simply to Renovo and back you could do that in one long day, and you'd regret turning around and having to come home. Believe me, the Watertown bit was rather boring, in fact, New York was pretty much a straight line ride for the most part as I wanted to be home around 1600 or earlier.US 219 slows down through all the towns along the route after Springville NY, so if you can bypass towns like Oleans etc, you'll make even better time.Good luck!

 

[kiterider]

Change up the route.Here's the route I'm doing this weekend over Saturday and Sunday. http://g.co/maps/nf8bh800kms to Holland NY, then say three hours back to Toronto. If you shorten the loop somewhat and try for 600 per day you'll have a great ride and won't have to worry about police. Leave it as is and be careful in New York, but Pennsylvania has no reciprocity, so a ticket is cash out of pocket with no speeding ticket on record. At least it was that way in 2007 when I got a reminder that I ride a bit fast. If you were to ride simply to Renovo and back you could do that in one long day, and you'd regret turning around and having to come home. Believe me, the Watertown bit was rather boring, in fact, New York was pretty much a straight line ride for the most part as I wanted to be home around 1600 or earlier.US 219 slows down through all the towns along the route after Springville NY, so if you can bypass towns like Oleans etc, you'll make even better time.Good luck!

Thanks for the info. The focus of my trip is RT 144 as you've marked above. Anything else will be gravy.

 

[BlueVFR]

I was wondering where the picture in google map was taken for the bridge along 120. Next time for sure I will get up to the Hyner state park. We were going down that way to WV on the Labour Day long weekend.

Thanks for the info. The focus of my trip is RT 144 as you've marked above. Anything else will be gravy.

 

[kiterider]

How are the roads overall leading to, as well as on Rt 44. I heard that PA was hit hard by the floods as well last month.
I'll have to set up my GPS for this soon. If anyone is interested in joining, send me a PM.
I'll be heading out this Sunday and heading back Monday evening.

 

[Rotten_Ronnie]

Route 14s and 44 were in great shape, although we did see that one washed over bridge, there were a couple of closures and one minor detour that was easy to follow.

The Catskills where I was last weekend seemed much harder hit, with two major road closures that affected our routing, but not significanty.

I've purposefuly stayed away from Vermont and New Hampshire as all the roads I wanted to route on were in river valleys.

I believe route51w.com or similar will detail road and bridge closures.

 

[kiterider]

Route 14s and 44 were in great shape, although we did see that one washed over bridge, there were a couple of closures and one minor detour that was easy to follow.

The Catskills where I was last weekend seemed much harder hit, with two major road closures that affected our routing, but not significanty.

I've purposefuly stayed away from Vermont and New Hampshire as all the roads I wanted to route on were in river valleys.

I believe route51w.com or similar will detail road and bridge closures.

Awesome!! Thanks again for the info. I'll try and take a detour along St. Rt 4005, then switchback to 144 or 44 and do the reverse around 120 on the way back. Too many roads to explore. I might even try kettle creek state park along the way.

As far as getting down there I might try something different. When I used to live in NY I would take the 390/15 and then 86/17 east to NYC.
It was bit nostalgic going back to Letchworth state park at Mt Morris this spring, after 8 years, since I left school. The roads were empty and I saw no one there except for a few park rangers and it seemed nice and twisty with a few 180 bends. The roads within the park do not show up on the map but one can follow the signs to Mt Morris and then Letchworth, from I-390. It's about 30 mins south of Rochester, NY if I recall correctly.
I really want to head that way, then take 19A/19 to 275 or 305 and snake my way down to 44 to coudersport and onward.