Road Trip Day Two (Friday)

I've added a slideshow after this entry with the pictures we took Friday. After we had been riding for most of the day, I gave Mom my camera so she could take pictures while we rode.

Friday morning we got up between 7:00 and 7:30. I called my mom to make sure they were up, then the hubby and I got ready and went to the hotel lobby to have breakfast. They had a continental breakfast, so I had a bagel with cream cheese and some yogurt, along with my coffee in order to get my caffeine in for the day. Shortly after we finished breakfast, my mom called me to let me know that they were ready to go, and they came up to our hotel to meet us as we were getting the bikes ready. Then we headed down the road a few blocks to the host hotel to complete registration for the Rally and pick up our goodies.

After registration, we sat in the lobby of the Clarion to go through the packets and decide what we wanted to do. There were some different things going on that seemed like fun, and we could do several of them all at the same time, so we headed out.

One of the events was a Poker Run. I had never participated in one before, but always thought they sounded like fun. This one was done a bit differently than the way I understand they're usually done, but it was really fun. It was called the "Get Your Crabs" Poker Run. There was a list of seven different places to stop at, and in order to be eligible, we had to visit at least five of them. We got a crab stamp on our sheet at each place we stopped. Then we were to take our sheets back to the registration site and draw our poker hand. We ended up going to six of the seven places on the list. The seventh was kind of out of the way compared to the other six, so we decided not to go to that one.

The second one we decided we wanted to participate in was the Observation Ride. This one consisted of 15 trivia questions about the area, all of which we could find the answers as we were riding. The claim was that all answers to the questions could be seen "from the seat of your Harley." Well, actually only 14 of them were questions about the Outer Banks. The 15th one was the Odometer reading of the motorcycle. We decided since Mom was riding passenger, she could keep her sheet handy and be able to write the answers down as we found them. We were all looking for the answers and would let her know when we found one. If all 15 questions were answered correctly, we would be entered in a drawing for prizes. That one was really fun, too, and I learned some interesting things about the Outer Banks that I didn't know before.

The third thing we were doing at the same time was the self-guided Lighthouse Ride. We were given the information about the lighthouses along the Outer Banks, along with the route to see them all. We didn't make it to all four of them, because it's a long stretch. But I got to see the one I really wanted to see, Cape Hatteras, and we saw the one at Bodie Island as well.

We visited a lot of different places. The first stop on the poker run was a brewery, called The Weeping Radish. The owner is German and the brewmeister trained in Germany. We got to sample their beers, which were some of the best we've had since we got back to the States. I think for just a few minutes the hubby was wishing we had the car so we could stock up. I think I'm going to have to explore their website, though. Looks like they have a beer of the month club.

After that we went to the Harley-Davidson shop in Kitty Hawk, stopped at a couple of different restaurants, one of which was a barbecue place where we ate lunch. It was delicious. Our last poker run stop was at the Scotch Bonnet in Frisco, which is a fudge and gift shop. My mom had been looking forward to that one all day. She loves fudge. I could take it or leave it, and can only eat a little more than a taste at a time. I went in to see what else they had, though, and they had some cute things. But we were running low on space, so I resisted buying anything. After visiting the Scotch Bonnet, we stopped at both of the lighthouses we had passed on our way down. I wasn't disappointed - they are beautiful!

The riding on Friday was interesting. The weather was pretty strange. I expect unpredictable weather on the coast though - that's just the way it is. I mentioned before we went on this trip that isolated or scattered thunderstorms were expected over the weekend. It did rain while we were there, but we managed to stay out of it all weekend long. We didn't avoid the wind, though. While we were riding south toward the lighthouses, the wind was really strong. That wouldn't have been so bad except for the dunes on both sides of the road. The wind was blowing sand across the road in some spots, and we got blasted by the sand a few times. That really stung, to say the least! I told the hubby to look on the bright side - we got a good exfoliation treatment out of it!

After we finished riding for the day, we went back to our hotels to unload the bikes and get ready for dinner. We had coupons for a restaurant called Port O' Call, so we decided to try it out. It turned out to be a really NICE place - almost on the fancy side. Their prices, though, were better than Dirty Dick's, where we had eaten the night before. After we ate dinner, we checked out their antique shop. The hubby found their stash of Civil War weapons, and found an authentic Civil War Cavalry sword. He wanted it bad, but of course it was more than we could afford. Maybe another day.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we ran into a woman from his unit that works in Raleigh and her friend. We knew they were coming and they had just arrived that night and were looking for some supper before they turned in for the night. We talked with them for a little while and headed on back to the hotel, had a couple of beers we had picked up earlier and got some sleep before another early start the next morning.