I got super fortunate and the prior owner traded it in with all of the accessories on it when he was picking up a KTM 890. 25 model with 11k miles(he rode a looootttt)

I read the sign here, and no part of it explained just how this vista got its name. What a rip off.

Even in the middle of nowhere, you get the occasional reminder that civilization is never quite as far away as you'd expect.

It quit raining eventually. It turns out there actually is a valley down there after all.

Only a bit damp. At one point there was a small river running through my camp site...

Very eagle eyed readers may spot a sneak preview here of something else I've been working on lately.

Or: What the Dork has been up to lately rather than posting anything resembling meaningful knife content.

Eagle Mike is the best.

Flash back to this spring, when I stopped by The Mountain House, which is a biker bar situated at the top of the Tuscarora Summit. Or so sayeth the sign out front on the road, anyway. It's on the Lincoln Highway just outside of McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania and just a short jaunt from the route of the MABDR, especially if you'd like to take a shortcut to Green Ridge in Maryland. Or you can stop over if you're doing the coast-to-coast on the Lincoln Highway itself which I promise I'll get around to one of these years.

Cheap burgers, an outdoor back deck with seating and a halfway decent view of the valley and mountains beyond, and all the Harley dudes were very intrigued by my KLR: "That thing looks like you could take it anywhere!"

I discovered that this campsite may as well be designed for motocamping: It's tiny. You could probably shove your car in that gravel patch there which would put you about 3' from the fire ring, and then there'd be no place to put a tent. I used my hammock instead. Possibly partially to justify lugging the thing around everywhere.

Passing by I saw one guy going down the mountain on a blue Ténéré 700 and a couple riding two up (!) on a green KLX230. The next morning on my way out I passed a guy on a Harley on the main road who found himself with a mystery flat tire. We couldn't find any cause for the air loss so I used my little plug-in pump to reinflate it and sent him on his way.

If it looks like my bike has too many mirrors on it, it's not because I've converted it into a Quadrophenia tribute. My buddy's KLR is actually parked directly next to mine and at this angle it's unintentionally almost completely concealed...

Anyone have any recs for a quiet and ideally cheap muffler?

My bike came with a Leo Vince X3 and it's a little too loud for me. Is the stock one the quietest?

Today, atop the lookout at the Confederate Breastworks Interpretive Site on Shenandoah Mountain in Virginia. Near West Augusta, to be precise.

You probably could ride your bike right up to the edge, there, but that might be considered rude.

Bonus picture of the other side of town:

Two nice hills. Know what I mean? Like, huge tracts of land...

You call that a rock? That's not a rock. This is a rock.

I've posted this pic before; you may have seen it in your travels. If you are well traveled, you might have seen this rock in person as well. Bonus points for anyone who knows where it is.

In this case Seneca Rocks. It's well worth the stop off and the hike up.

No, you can't ride to the top. Not without a trials bike, anyway. Or a horse.

Somewhere in the Appalachians...

I washed up in eastern Virginia one time, hundreds of miles from home, in the pouring rain. As we all do from time to time.

I remembered that the parents of a friend of mine have a property out in the middle of the woods with a pavilion on it, which turned out to be only about half an hour's ride from where I was. I managed to nail down where it was by hazy recollection, and it provided a handy spot to hang all my stuff to drip and string up my hammock for the night.

Four star accommodations. As you can see, I had three whole picnic tables all to myself.

And you'd better believe me, I have plenty of them.

I lost one of my lower subframe bolts somewhere on this trip, and I just noticed that you can see it's clearly missing in this pic. This is possibly retroactively helping me narrow it down, not that this is very useful... I stopped by a hardware store in some small town out in the sticks and bought a random metric bolt to replace it with. (And a spare, for the other side.)