Exploring in Southern NH

Over on adv.com has been a thread about some good off road locations near me. I headed out alone to explore a little of them today. Did a nice little loop... Picked up the South Chester TP and yes, its all paved... headed north, cutoff on Raymond Road (dirt) and then it turned into a trail mostly... narrow, some soft stuff and loose rock. It looks very promising but being alone, I backed to the Chester TP and continued North.

Start of TP

Raymond Road

Raymond road narrows

Heading back North, I came to the start of the dirt on the CTP, just North of route 27. You can see the end ahead, the road is gated right at Candia road ... so I made the right on Candia... saw the house mentioned in an earlier post on ADV and the road narrowed up from that point on. Just a short ways down was a fork, left appeared clearly marked Private (though later on the map the left fork looked like the road) and the right fork was downhill slightly and fully leaf covered. Being alone, I reversed direction and headed back towards the North entry to the Chester TP.

Where CTP turns to dirt

My bike at the fork, before turning...

When I got up to the North section of Chester,it was also gated... I was a little disappointed as these were mentioned on the forum and I expected that they were open. Anyway, I headed back towards home... I looked at the Epping links provided on the forum, but it was gonna be getting late for that. Decided to head back where I found Raymond Road and take the dirt east... There was not much there, wide graded and short before hitting pavement so I headed down by Lake Massabesic ... and then Rte 121 down to 102 to head home... By the LakeI stumbled on two more sections of the turnpike, one off of Candia Road and the other just north of 102. The first went back a ways and might be worth exploring more... The 2nd was short and marked as a dead end.

"Old Chester Turnpike"

More OCTP

All in all, a good day... cool but dry...Not too many more good riding days left this season so we all need to make the best of them.Be safe...

Pat in NH

Trans MA Trail

I put a post up on ADV.com and also sent a couple emails about wanting to ride the Trans MA Trail, the route layed out by Keith from ADV. None of my friends could make that weekend but we had a few resoponses during the week from ADV. I suspected we may get 4 or 5 riders including Keith who did the route. Saturday we received heavy rains and there was some concern about the morning of the ride, and also the condition of the roads.

Turned out to be a Great day.... Road to Winsted CT to the start point.. by the time 9:30 rolled around we had a total of 9 bikes.. KTM 990 Adventure, Vstrom, R1200GS, 2 F650GS's and 4 KLR's. All had knobbies except the 1200, the strom and my 650...

We spread out and basically each road their own ride.. Keith led and was followed by the faster riders and those who ran a more relaxed pace... (me and the strom!) stayed more rear ward. For the most part, we never lagged behind much, usually just when it got a little bit loose gravel or rocky... Keith would hold up when encountering an intersection until we were all re-grouped. It worked well and he did a nice job. The roads were great, and actually in better shape than I expected after the rain!! Not much different than the PDR or Baley Hazen. Once section was washed out pretty good and Keith led the strom around it, I did it without much trouble... just slowed a bit..

We stopped about noon for lunch, 3/4 of the way in. 4 of the bikes peeled off after lunch while 5 of us continued on to Greenfield. The strom left us in Greenfield as the last 4 of us did a section of the PDR up towards route 9.. splitting up there, Keith and I headed east and parted company at 91... I then took 9/7 and 101 back through Keene... arriving home about 6pm

Here is Keiths ride report with a few photos.. http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7825394&postcount=43

Pat in NH

Baley-Hazen Military Road

I had previously gotten data on this road from ADV.com and decided on August 25th that I would do either this or the Trans MA Trail over Labor day weekend. I put out a notice and Yigal responded and we discussed the 2 routes. I was flexible and after looking at the various mileages and info on the routes, we decided to do the Baley-Hazen on Sunday, September 7th.

Here is a link to info on the trail itself.... Interesting history... with a map..

http://www.jcarton.com/BayleyHazenIntro.pdf

It was gonna be over a 400 mile day, with 200 miles of that just the return home. Yigal and I met at 5am and rode to Wells River VT where we had breakfast at the P&H Truck Stop. Tom met us there just after 8am and we headed out on the trail after breakfast.

After the trail, Tom who lives in VT, suggested we do Smugglers Notch and then Stowe before we broke up for home. He led us on a nice scenic tour on some great Twisty roads.

Here is a short ride report I sent to ADV along with a few photo's...

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7770468&postcount=31

When I got home, it was about 450 Miles and 14 1/2 hours!! A great time with some great company on some historic roadways!

Pat in NH

Puppy Dog Ride Report

Ok, now that the ride is over and things have settled, it is time for a little recap of the weekend.


I had read much about the VT Puppy Dog Ride and gathered data from the website.Dave met me at my work at about 2:00pm on Thursday the 10th of July. We headed out, down to 101a in Nashua/Amherst and then picked up 122 to 130, to 13 down into MA where we hopped on Route 2 west. Our destination was Greenfield and the Super 8 Motel. We arrived there about 4:30, got checked in and then just hung out a bit until Peggy arrived.

Peggy is from the "Chain Gang" (f650.com), a forum for the F650 BMW. We had never met but we had conversed on the forum and she was close to where we were staying. She had contacted us to meet and have dinner before our departure. She arrived just after 6pm, we kicked tires a bit inthe parking lot before heading in to town for dinner. It was a pleasant evening and great to meet Peggy. She had just done this ride about a month prior. After dinner she headed home, Dave and I gassed up the bikes and headed up to get some sleep.




We were up early Friday morning, got our stuff packed up and ready to go. I had a cell phone issue that caused a slight delay but then we got on the road. It was expected to be warm and clear all day (and in fact all weekend). We had both the route sheets and also a GPS file. Later we would switch to Route sheet only)












Once on the trail, we were able to enjoy the scenery and the tranquility of the ride. During the morning ride, we got off route (via GPS) a couple different times. In both cases we discovered the deviation and then used the route sheet to get back on to the main route. From that point, it seemed that the GPS routing had some issues so we reverted to working primarily with the route sheet.

"On The Trail"

"One of the Covered Bridges"

"Our Lunch Stop"

"Back on the Trail"

As we neared the end of the first day, we were pleased with the scenery, the roads and the weather. It was a good day of off road riding. The route had us crossing the Floating Bridge in VT. It was closed earlier this season to traffic as it is actually sinking now so we plotted a detour around it. We did stop to see it before we went to the camp ground. We took a short break, walked around the area and snapped a few photo's before headed around to our campsite at Allis State Park.




The campground was very nice and we went and picked a site out in a field away from the roads. After setting up camp, we ran in to the nearest convenience store and grabbed some food. Picking up some firewood, we returned and had a small fire before turning in.

In the morning, we broke camp, headed out for a breakfast sandwich and fuel, then took to the trail again. The weather again looked to be on our side again with clear blue skies with just some white puffy clouds. Temperature was mild and I stayed with my mesh jacket.




The North section, in my opinion was a better ride. We are more into the Green Mountains and the scenery just seemed to be much better. There were many nice vista's as we climbed up out of wooded sections.

Some of the trails were also a bit more technical (re:difficult) and this was challenging to our riding skills. A couple of these are not much more than single tracks through the woods.






Along some of the ridges in the North was a lot of open farm land. You could look out from these clear areas and see for miles. Very breathtaking. The other added plus was the GPS routinhg semmed to be dead on. We made great time during this leg. Granted, some of the GPS issues yesterday were probably my fault, this made the 2nd day ride much smoother.





At one point, we crossed the Bayley Hazen Military Road. This will be the subject of a future ride and today, we crossed it at one section and traveled on it for a few miles.

This is an old road from the Revolution and a good percentage of it is still open today. I plan to do that before the summer is out.




Even with several photo op's and a few scenic stops, we finished up the north Section earlier than planned, ending around 2:15. It was early enough that we decided to abort the 2nd camping night and go ahead and start heading home.

A few hours later, we were back home safe and sound. Another successful adventure complete. Yet so many more to do.... now its time to Rest!






Ride Safe!
Pat in NH

The eagle has landed....

The eagle has landed. We completed the puppy dog run. Today was an excellent ride. GPS was dead on, all the routes, turns were just perfect and we got down so smoothly that we came all the way back home so we're actually home and safe and sound. Hope everybody had a good weekend. Good bye. listen

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