Day Trip, Lake Murray Loop

I took the opportunity a couple weeks ago to take a day and drive down highway 77 to Lake Murray. I had heard good things about the loop that circles the lake, and decided to give it a try. Highway 77 was a great road, running roughly parallel to I35, but twistier. I'd recommend it on it's own as a good day ride, even without the lake loop. 

77 cuts straight through downtown Wynnewood, Oklahoma. The mainstreet still has the original brick-paved surface. Coincidentally, this picture was taken right around the time I lost 77 completely and went about 20 miles out of the way of my originally planned route. It all worked out though. We ended up passing through a very nice nature preserve on our way back.

We filled up the tank in Ardmore, just before reaching the lake. I wish I had a picture of the station. There was a woman in a little booth, and some very "retro" pumps. After you fill up, you just go over to the booth and tell the woman how much you put in and pay her. She even rounded it down to the dollar. Compared to the pay before you pump method at most stations today, it seemed very foreign. 

When we got to the lake, we stopped in this little park area for a picnic lunch. Other than being a little windy, it was a perfect day for it. 

Tamales and corn make a great meal for camping or picnicking if you bring a small camp stove. It might not look great, but it's easy, you don't have to carry much, it's hearty enough to fill you up during a long day, and it's delicious. Just take a can of creamed corn and a can of tamales, combine them in a pot, heat and eat.

After lunch, we got back on the bike for the ride around the lake. It had warmed up a little, and was really a perfect day for it.

Lake Murray is positioned just south of Oklahoma's Arbuckle mountains (or  at least what we call mountains here in Oklahoma, but they're at least pretty) so it has some great rock formations.

Lake Murray State Park is the largest, and oldest, state park in Oklahoma. There are several interesting buildings on site, including a lighthouse that has been converted into a museum about the history of the park as well as the local wildlife.

Other Resources: -The MotorcycleRoads.US page about the loop

-A bit about the history of the park

Motocamping 101

I took my first motorcycle camping trip this weekend, to Devils Den State Park in Arkansas. Lessons's were learned (including just how far my bike will go on reserve) but there were no major catastrophes and everyone (and almost everything) made it home in one piece.

This was taken at our first rest stop. The bike handled remarkably well with all the added weight, though I could definitely feel it through the tighter turns, and ended up taking most them pretty slowly. She behaved herself just fine through the wider, sweeping curves though, and that's the kind of riding I enjoy most anyway.We stopped in Henryetta, Oklahoma for lunch, at The Pig Out Palace. It's a little pricey for a greasy spoon (a little over $10 a person for the all you can eat buffet) but the food's pretty good, and the service, as well as the customers, are always very friendly.
For dessert, they have a selection of 4 different kinds of cobbler. I highly recommend the blackberry, with a little softserve on top.
If you're ever not sure where to eat on the road, just look for the place with all the trucks parked outside. If anyone knows where to eat on the road, truckers do.
We took the interstate on the way there, due to time constraints, but once we got close to the park there were some pretty good roads.
When we finally arrived, my new luggage rack and top case (more on those in the series of entries I'm currently working on) made unloading go quickly. When we first started planning the trip, I couldn't figure out how to bring everything we would need without covering the pillion seat. Luckily for me, the Majesty has a deceptively large amount of underseat storage, and a little ingenuity and some angle iron will go a long way.

Saturday was filled with hiking, and cave exploring. Here, Erika contemplates life while staring into an infinite abyss, just before we climbed around in it.
There was actually quite a bit of climbing on Saturday, not just in infinite abysses. The hole I'm sitting in is caused by pockets of sandstone, which weathers much faster than the harder stone surrounding it.
On the way back, we took I-540 south to Oklahoma Highway 9, which runs roughly parralel to I-40, but farther south. It's a much more interesting ride than the interstate, and as it turns out, takes about the same amount of time.
The only casualty from the trip was my homemade saddlebags, which had never really been filled up before. It was nothing a few zip ties and a pocket knife couldn't fix though.

p.s. I'd suggest always keeping a few zip ties on board your bike, not to mention around the house. They're really just too useful not to have.
The final mileage came out to 525 exactly, with the way there being slightly longer than the way back. There's a good chance that it was because I missed the first exit to the park on the way there, but I'd rather just chalk it up to backroads being a better way to travel.

Blue Skies Shining on Me

I just finished watching the documentary "Long Way Round" about Ewan Mcreggor and his friend riding around the world on motorcycles, and it put me in the mood to take a trip. Luckily for me, it was a balmy 58 degrees today. Erika and I took the oppertunity to take a ride down S.H. 9 to Lake Thunderbird for the afternoon.
The ride was nice, though a little on the windy side, as you can tell by the photo to the left. It seems like the wind has more effect on me with a passenger, or maybe it's just harder to compensate with the extra weight. I'm not sure. It was still a pleasant ride though. We visited a few boat ramps and docks, took some pictures, and really just enjoyed the stint of nice weather. Unfortunately, Erika deemed it too cold for swimming. The weather is supposed to be in the fifties and sixties for at least the next week, so I'm hoping to fit in a drive down highway 77 to Stillwater sometime next weekend. I'd really like to take a longer trip somewhere soon, perferrably an overnight, but I don't want to go alone, and I can't think of anyway to pack the tent and other camping gear without covering the pillion seat. I guess I'll just have to keep trying to talk Erika into buying herself a bike suitable for highway speeds. Until than, there are plenty of docks and lakes and whatever else to drive to within an hour or two of here.


p.s. I apologize profusely for the cheesy title...

MotorcycleRoads.US

This will be a quick one, but I just stumbled upon a website called MotorcycleRoads.US that's basically a catalog of US roads, mostly rural highways, listed by state, and categorized as scenic, sweeping curves, twisties, or unpaved. They draw their information from several different mapping programs, as well as rider reccomendations, and road information includes maps, links to local resources, lists of connecting roads, and rider comments. It looked to me like it could definitely be a useful resource for trip planning, so I thought I'd throw it out there. You can access it by going to http://www.motorcycleroads.us/index.html or by clicking the title link. Enjoy.

Wanderlust

Wanderlust (Middle High German: wandern, to wander, and Lust, desire) is a German loanword. It is commonly defined as a strong desire to travel, or by having an itch to get out and see the world [1]. Some consider it to be a simple linguistic compound of wander and lust.



It's an interesting thing. Reading all of my fellow scooterists blogs don't help either. See, here in the real world, i'm definitely no world traveler. I go to work. I come home. That's the majority of it. But in my head, I'm going cross country with my whole life piled up and bungeed in place on the backseat of my bike (I'm still trying to figure out how I could safely carry my guitar). My friend Zach, though not a two-wheeler, is definitely a wanderer. He just recently finished a 4 month stint in Australia, came back for almost a month, then on a whim went off to South Korea for the next 13 months, this time with a work visa to teach English. I mention him because I've definitely been guilty of a little envy lately. I've always seen myself as the type to travel without really having a destination in mind. I do it all day in my mind. Unfortunately, here in reality, every trip I've ever been on has been carefully planned, calculated, and scheduled, in true family vacation fashion, and with 4 wheels firmly planted under my feet.

Even when I had my little Vino125, I would imagine how far it could go. I'd look at maps, drawing out in my mind the web of tiny little back roads that could carry me to who knows where. Now that I have the majesty, my range seems only limited by coast lines (which are all a pretty good stretch from Oklahoma) and how much I can manage to carry. So, why haven't I been discovering every little nook and cranny of this state, every time I had a couple days to myself? Why am I not sleeping in my tent as much as in my bed? The truth is... I don't really know. I guess my bark is just worse than my bite. I talk about my list of nifty little backpacker gadgets that I'd like to take on the road with me. I talk about places I haven't seen lately that I'd like to return to, and it's a rare day when you don't hear me say something along the lines of "when I start touring...". So what's keeping me here? What's preventing my wanderlust from becoming wander-satisfaction? That's what I'd like to figure out...