. The 2007 Pine Barrens 500
Day 2 - The Southern Loop
Saturday started out just as early for me as friday, by 5 AM, I was in the meeting room I reserved for the weekend that served as our downloading center and a place to meet before and after the days rides. We downloaded the new routes into all the GPS's, had our riders meeting and headed south for what was to be the "easy day". I think the total mileage for Saturdays route was about 175 miles, with more pavement than the previous day. Again about 45 riders signed up for this day, with a few new faces from the day before.
The route had the riders leaving the hotel parking lot and heading south into MakePeace WMA. It had rained a few days before the event and the first section was very wet. A friend of my Chris Borger was on his brand new, white BMW1200 GS and I had told his this would be a perfect day for him to get that bike dirty. When I saw how wet the first couple of miles were I tried to call his cell phone to give him a way to go around the wet section, but he didn't answer the call, I left a message and continued on.
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I was riding with The KTM adventure tour reps Bob and Chris, Chris W on his 950 and Joe Dints on his DrZ400. The make peace lake section has another great twisty gravel road that's about 8 or 9 miles long and reminds me of a Scrambles track, long winding straights with a few tight corners thrown in for fun.
After Makepeace WMA, the route hit the pavement for about 15 miles to get everybody into Hammer Country. This is the area where the Tri-County Sportsman MC runs their events and is a completely different type of terrain then the Pine Forests from the day before.
Still being a little wet from the rain, we had no problems crossing these hard bottom puddles. I had detoured my group into a little recon ride, to check out a section that I wanted to explore while we were down that way, to include next year. Here Chris W crosses one of the deeper puddles.
The southern loops destination was the shore of the Delaware Bay. He we are in Heislerville WMA, and then at East Point.
While everyone was down by the bay shore area, I gave them an option to get right up to the beach, but to get there they had travel a long wet gravel road through a typical salt water marsh. I told them the puddles were filled with really stinky, nasty mud and this way point was an option, they didn't have to go down this road to stay on the route. A dozen or so brave soul's attempted to reach the southern most point of the 3 day ride, Moore's Beach right on the Delaware Bay.
Here's Joe Dints next to my bike on Moore's Beach. We went down Moore's beach road together to check on a broken down bike and headed to the end while we were there. I'd been here 2 or 3 times before and really didn't feel like getting all muddy again, but I figured I'd let Joe see the water. You can smell the salt air, and with a great view, was worth the effort of get there, I think that's the spirit of adventure riding. The road less traveled sort of thing.
After the bay shore section, we headed toward Bellplain State Forest mostly on the road for another 7 or 8 miles. The route brought the riders back into the woods on some more of those great gravel roads and then down a section along a railroad track and into Tuckahoe WMA for more gravel and great scenery along the marshes.
We had traveled about 90 miles so far, without stopping for gas or lunch, and some of the riders were getting hungry and low on gas. Everyone made it the 95 miles, without any one running out of gas, to the filling station. We then headed about a mile down the road to The Buck Tavern for lunch.
Here's Chris and Shawn, arriving at The Buck Tavern as we were leaving.
