Shenandoah National Park from Skyline Drive, Virginia

New River Gorge Bridge, north of Beckley, West Virginia

New River Gorge Bridge

My guardian angel on my trip

View of the Mississippi River from the top of the Gateway Arch

The Old Courthouse on Dred Scott Way, viewed from the top of the arch

Arch shadow

At the top, 630 feet in the air

The tiny 5-seat pods that take you to the top

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri

Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Missouri

Mark Twain Riverboats

Tom Sawyer's whitewashed fence

Three years later, here I am again, making another trek across the country to visit family in Colorado.  This time, though, I have the opportunity to make the outgoing trip with my dad and stepmom, Ellen, as they return home from a Motorcycle Touring Association rally in Matamoras, Pennsylvania.

We left Maryland Sunday morning, June 24th, at 6:00am, heading west on I-70 to Frederick, then south on route 340 to Front Royal, Virginia.  Front Royal is where Skyline Drive, which runs 110 miles through Shenandoah National Park, begins.  It was a very pleasant morning and a nice ride 35-40 miles through the park, at which point we zigged west through Luray to I-81 south to I-64 west.  Route 60 winds 35 miles through the West Virginia hills to route 19, which took us right to the New River and its notable bridge.  The New River Gorge Bridge is the longest single-arch bridge in the world and the second highest bridge in the US.  It's so high that you could stack 2 Statues of Liberty on top of the Washington Monument and they wouldn't touch the bridge.  From there we headed for Beckley, WV for the night.

We had planned to head south into North Carolina on Monday and hit Great Smokey Mountain National Park and ride route 28, called Tail of the Dragon, before heading for Lynchburg, TN to see the Jack Daniels distillery.  However, we realized that we would not be able to do all that and still make it home to Loveland, Colorado by Thursday evening, so we scratched that whole plan and headed west on I-64 again, through Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, into southern Indiana.  Interesting things on the way?  The unfortunate name on the Louisville sports arena (KFC Yum! Sports Complex), the very angry WV driver who ordered up a vanity plate that read IH8MYEX, and billboards for Holidayworld in Santa Claus, Indiana.  No sightseeing stops this day.  We ended the day in Evansville, Indiana for the night.

Another early start today, on the road by 7am.  We made it to Saint Louis by 10am, but sat in stop and go traffic with a lot of trucks for a bit.  Once we got off the interstate, we passed the new Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, and parked to visit the Gateway Arch.  What an impressive sight! 630 feet tall, completed in 1968, and hosts 2.5 million visitors per year, with 1 million of them riding the tiny little 5-seat pods that take you on a 4-minute ride to the top of the arch and its observation platform.  You get a tremendous view of the city and of the Mississippi from the top, with visibility measured in miles.  Below on the river there are helicopter tours and riverboat cruises offered, and on the other side you can clearly see the Old Courthouse where the original Dred Scott decision was handed down, before it was overturned by the Supreme Court.  We stopped at the Saint Louis Bread Company for lunch, which was suspiciously similar to Panera, and then headed out for an overnight stay in Hannibal, Missouri.  Hannibal is the boyhood home of Mark Twain and the main setting for Tom Sawyer.  It's a quaint little throwback town on the riverfront, offering dinner cruises on the Mississippi aboard the Mark Twain riverboat, with train running through town every half hour or so.  Now we're turning in for the night so we can get an extra early start tomorrow - it's supposed to be blazing hot, over 110 degrees in northern Kansas, where we're bound!  Need to get some miles behind us before we get baked in the sun!