- Week Alabama, it's not like they said!

[klaviator]

We headed for our lunch stop.

Lunch was at the Homestead Cafe. Good food and service with reasonable prices. Very unusual these days.

Getting ready to ride again.

Back on the gravel roads that were originally intended to be a four lane highway.

And then we went exploring. Last time we were here we saw some trails but didn't have the time to go exploring. Now we had the time.

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I found a lake.

 

[klaviator]

We were mostly wandering around by ourselves. Finally someone said we should all ride the same trails together so I led off.

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This place was a big maze of trails, clearings and puddles.

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We came out to a paved road. Some of the group made it and some were missing so we went back to find them. I didn't see it when I took this next pic but it looks like a giant dragonfly to the right and slightly above the riders head

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[klaviator]

We got back to where we started out by the abandoned road. The rest of the group was still missing. We waited for a while and eventually they showed up. We stood around talking and someone said "I think we broke Natalee"

Sure enough, it looked that way.

You can see how concerned everyone is about her condition!

Maybe the dos equis did it

After a bit we headed off to the Bridges to Nowhere.

There are actually 6 of these bridges that serve no purpose except to amuse a few dual sport riders I took this next pic at the middle bridges.

 

[klaviator]

Last we came to the biggest of the bridges.

We went and hung out on one of the bridges. Its not like there is any traffic.

Its a pretty impressive view.

I thought it would be an interesting view from the bottom so I searched for a way down to the boat launch ramp. A dirt/gravel trail led to a paved road which went to the boat ramp.

I saw a narrow trail that headed off to the left so I followed it as far as I could.

There was a path beyond this point but a trails bike would have been more appropriate to continue on. I took the above pic and got my bike turned around and went back where a couple of riders had also followed.

The guy on the left was on the Taureg. I didn't recomend taking a heavy bike down the trail. He took some pics and headed back. Here's one of his pics.

 

[klaviator]

The two of us then rode back out to the ledge at the end of the trail.

We walked past that point, decided it was worth trying to ride further and turned around.

Nice view from here.

Then we headed back up and then headed for home. A few pics on the ride home.

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The last part of the ride was pretty boring so no more pics. I rode about 175 miles for the day. After I got home I studied the area on Google maps. I used the satellite view since the bridges, gravel roads and are we explored don;t appear on the map view. There is still a lot more to be explored in that area so we will be going back again.

 

[FLrider]

Those abandoned wastes of tax payer money do get some use at least, even if it is by a small number of people.. Great pics!

 

[klaviator]

Last Saturday I went to a small bore bike get together put on by a member of the North Alabama Vintage Motorcycle Club. It started in a parking lot next to downtown Huntsville.

The bike above was a Yamaha DT50 2 stroke. I still remember when those were new bikes.


This guy had a Yamaha 125 and 175 2 strokes.

Most of the bikes were vintage.

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WECSOG showed up on a more modern bike, a TW200.

 

[klaviator]

More "modern" bikes.

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Getting ready to go ride.

The plan was to ride around downtown. That may not sound like fun and it's not my normal kind of ride but it turned out to be more fun than I expected. I was riding a small scooter which is perfect for city riding and it gave me the chance to take a bunch of pics.

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Keeping the group together was a bit of a challenge.

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[Buster Grumpy]

Cool truck thing... where can regular folk get those?

 

[klaviator]

Cool truck thing... where can regular folk get those?

It's a Dodge Ram Promaster cutaway chassis. If you want one go see a Dodge dealer.

 

[klaviator]

We stopped and took a break in a place I hadn't been before.

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Heading back out to ride some more.

 

[klaviator]

Huntsville became the biggest city in Alabama earlier this year but you would never guess that based on the size of downtown. We rode through downtown an the historic district right at the edge of downtown.

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[klaviator]

More ride pics.

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