Hall of Fame Road Trip

[Pittsdriverwes]

Feeling the call of the open road but having checked off almost all the more epic destinations on the bucket list what's a guy to do that just needs to be on the bike for a week? My long time riding bud and I are planning a week getaway starting next week that will be mainly in Ohio. Huh, you say? Yeah, Ohio is one of those fly-over states that would be generally uninteresting in terms of entertaining riding anywhere but the southeast corner of the state. Don't flame me for saying that and I can totally appreciate that some people love the riding in that state. That's just not me. So why are we doing this?

We're setting our sights on the famous and not-so-famous-but-weird-and-quirky in the state of Ohio - and a couple of minor league ball games.

The first major destination will be to make a stop at the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Then we're off to see the world's largest cuckoo clock in Sugar Creek. Who doesn't have that on their bucket list?

From there we plan a visit to the NFL Football Hall of Fame for a bucket list check.

Next stop is to catch the Akron Rubber Ducks minor league ball game in an ongoing project to grade the nation's minor league hotdogs. Then we'll moving on to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (hence the name of the tour).

From here it gets a bit sketchy as we plan to be in Put-In-Bay Ohio to check out what happens at the annual Pyrate Festival. I've heard some first hand accounts that it can get pretty, uh, hedonistic with rampant sloppy drunkeness there. We're not in to that but watching it happen for scientific observation may be entertaining - and who knows - what happens in the Pyrate Fest, stays at the Pyrate fest.

If we survive the festival then the next stop will be to watch the Toledo Mudhens minor league game while relaxing and grading this park's hotdogs.

After an overnight in Toledo, we'll move on the Mansfield OH to visit the places made famous in the Shawshank Redemption, a truly great movie. That probably won't take a lot of time so we'll still be able to stop and take in CornHenge before wrapping up our loop of upper Ohio in Columbus for the Firefly Dusk to Dawn race.

That's the rough plan but we haven't (and won't) book any places to stay until the late afternoon the day of and, as always, our traveling mantra is: "We've got nowhere to be and all day to get there."

If anyone wants to chime in with other don't miss quirky, weird, or entertaining sights we should see in the lovely state of Ohio, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Probably leave Monday and be back home by Sunday.

[justjoe]

Cleveland Museum of Art for their medieval arms and armor exhibit. Pretty cool and a little off the beaten path.

[Pittsdriverwes]

Looking at the museum web site, it looks like this is the only exhibit like that currently: https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibit...-armory-vienna

[Capnrip]

Not worth a huge detour but Serpent Mounds was pretty cool near Jackson. Not far from OH/KY/WV border. I think some covered bridges down there too. Amish country or used to be.

[Pittsdriverwes]

My friend is riding up from Georgia so I anticipate going through some good roads in West Virginia and Kentucky to meet up. I'll look in to Serpent Mounds. I plan on launching from Winchester VA on Tuesday morning and telling googly maps to avoid highways. Probably a lot of Rt 50 going west. I'll probably try to include the triple nickel on the way back home the following weekend.

[Susan]

We like quirky and weird. If you should go into Ohio from the WV side via the Silver Bridge, in Point Pleasant there stands Mothman. He is epic and you can rub the shiny 'hiny for good luck or something.
For a burlesque take on lunch, stop by O'Betty's Red Hots in Athens. The weenie with a wiggle. There's the Malta-McConnelsville bridge on Highway 78. It looks like a Erector set with all of the detailing.
9 miles down the road, there's the Big Muskie Drag Link Bucket, also in McConnelsville.
Rokeby Lock is nearby and it is both interesting and scary to watch the operator maneuver the occasional boat through the lock. You already know about the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Pickerington. That is a great stop.

[wildbears]

I used Red River Gorge and Daniel Boone National Forest when riding back and forth from Gatlinburg and Columbus. Also Pine Mountain. Some sections are pretty deserted.

[wildbears]

Pittsburgh has the world's largest bicycle museum BTW. https://www.bicycleheaven.org/pages/tourists-pictures

[Pittsdriverwes]

We like quirky and weird. If you should go into Ohio from the WV side via the Silver Bridge, in Point Pleasant there stands Mothman. He is epic and you can rub the shiny 'hiny for good luck or something.
For a burlesque take on lunch, stop by O'Betty's Red Hots in Athens. The weenie with a wiggle. There's the Malta-McConnelsville bridge on Highway 78. It looks like a Erector set with all of the detailing.
9 miles down the road, there's the Big Muskie Drag Link Bucket, also in McConnelsville.
Rokeby Lock is nearby and it is both interesting and scary to watch the operator maneuver the occasional boat through the lock. You already know about the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Pickerington. That is a great stop.

We have a similar legend in a place here between Annapolis and DC.

https://ghostsofdc.org/2023/11/03/ma...-legend-bowie/

During the pandemic, and for a brief time, there was a hot sauce named after this scary legend - apropos for a scary hot sauce.

[wildbears]

Hillbilly Hot-dogs on the Ohio River downstream from Moth Man.

A local motorcycle hangout.

https://www.hillbillyhotdogs.com/our-story

[Pittsdriverwes]

Whadda ya know! There is a fun road in Ohio:





I jumped on it at the north end and followed it all the way to US 50 Mile 0. Fun road ruined on several sections due to a preponderance of tar snakes but the rest of it was great. A real roller coaster road. I think I saw one other vehicle on it the entire morning.


I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit critical of the rest of the state. Seriously, who puts chili on spaghetti? Please....


I should also just add that before anyone gets seriously offended by my good natured ribbing of their state just know that I come from a place least qualified to be throwing stones. I have to travel a couple of hours to get from home to good riding country and it ain't in my state.

[Pittsdriverwes]

As predicted, it was hot as stink.

The plan was to meet my friend from Georgia in Point Pleasant WV on Tuesday for lunch. I loaded up my bike Monday morning and stood there looking at the empty back seat where I'd normally have my camping gear and the light bulb camp on in my noggin. I grabbed one of the soft coolers I use on the boat and strapped it down there with ice packs in it for drinks and my cooling scarfs I soaked in water. A cool wet scarf would last an hour or so wrapped around my neck on the go and being so hot I had committed to stopping about once an hour for a water break anyway. I'd take the cold one out and wet the one coming off in to a zip lock bag that went back in the cooler. That worked better than I imagined.

I left Annapolis about noon and the temp on the bike read 101.5 which, as I said, was hot as stink but the cold scarf was working. After a couple of stops I ended up in Romney WV for a late lunch. I had planned to stop at the Romney diner where I had my first breakfast stop on the way to Tuk a few years ago but they closed at 2pm. I circled back to the Lost Mountain BBQ place I smelled on my way in to town. They weren't officially open but they were there and I was the only patron. Looking at the tables outside I asked if they had any inside dining. Alas, no but would I like to come inside back in the air conditioned kitchen to eat? Done. Nice guys who know a thing or two about smoking meats (a subject on which I consider myself an expert).


​

From there it was an overnight in Elkins WV and some really nice riding from there to Point Pleasant. Anytime you're on a ride going east-west in West Virginia it's going to be amazing and it truly is my favorite place to ride. We met for lunch and then went a found the main reason we met here - the Mothman:


​


https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/mot...-west-virginia


After seeing this thing and reading about the lore, I'm surprised the Supernatural TV series never did an episode on it.

[Susan]

Did y'all rub the shiny 'hiny?

[Pittsdriverwes]

I didn't get anywhere near that thing's hiny. Creepy.

[Pittsdriverwes]

Our plan looked something like this basically telling google most of the time to avoid highways:





On the way from Point Pleasant to Akron we stopped by the Big Muskie:





They claim, perhaps incorrectly, that this was the largest man made movable object ever made (the NRAO dish in Greenbank would dispute that). It's a massive shovel used to move over 300 tons of earth in a single scoop when they were mining the area for coal.


https://ohiodnr.gov/go-and-do/plan-a...uskie-s-bucket

I bet that was quite a sight when it was in operation. We ended up Tuesday night in Sugar Creek OH, home to the World's Largest Cuckoo Clock:







Sugar Creek is a lovely little town that has absolutely nothing going on here except for a day in September when they have something akin to an Oktoberfest. So if seeing the World's Largest Cuckoo clock is on your bucket list you can check that off here. It does a cute animated show every half hour that always drew a small crowd when we were there. Overall, a lovely place to spend the evening with a good meal after which we joined the crowd at the ice cream shop.

[Pittsdriverwes]

Next stop was the NFL Football Hall of Fame - on every kid's bucket list to see some day.










If you're a pro football fan it was a pretty cool place to visit but I came away feeling like they could have done it better. For example, there are many coaches in the Hall but there was no real continuity story about how important they are to the game. I feel like the Baseball Hall in Cooperstown does it much better but hey, another bucket list item checked.

From Canton we were headed in to Akron to catch that Wednesday night game of the Rubber Ducks hosting the Harrisburg Senators AA baseball game. As we rolled in to Akron we went by the airport where it's hard to miss the massive blimp hanger there. We stopped at the airport FBO to see how to get over to it and were informed that Goodyear no longer uses that hanger but that their operation was only a few miles away. So off we went to see if we could get a tour.










The place was deserted but for a lonely receptionist who answered all our questions but wasn't allowed to let us out in to the hanger to look around. She was nice but basically told us to get lost but not before telling us who is using the big blimp hanger at the Akron airport - a company named Lighter Then Air (LTA) which was rumored to be founded by a Google money guy to develop an even more massive airship to be used in humanitarian missions. So off we go back to the Akron airport where we didn't even get to see the receptionist and were told to get lost by a speaker on the wall by the door of LTA. The voice was nice enough to give us directions on how to get close to the big hanger:





This is the hanger you may have heard stories about that it's has so much volume inside that it can have it's own weather systems. It's really big.

Thwarted at getting inside either facility, we left chagrined and went up in to Akron getting there and checking in early at our hotel about lunch time. When we went back out across the parking lot to lunch, we noticed my friend's Africa Twin was sitting on a completely flat rear tire. Our reaction was "huh..." and we went and had a nice Italian lunch were we plotted what to do about the tire. We had about 4 hours to kill before the baseball game so we located an independent bike shop that could replace the tube in his tire. It had a big piece of metal in it but we decided to see if we pumped it up would it hold air long enough to ride it to the shop 3.5 miles away. We got about half a mile before it was flat again so we pushed it up on the side walk on the service road and decided that we'd take off the wheel and I'd carry it over strapped to my bike. This is when that trail jack you've been carrying around for years finally comes in handy. I rode his wheel over to the nice folks at Mystery Motorcycles in Akron who replaced the tube and rebalanced the wheel and I arrived back at the sight of our sidewalk shenanigans to find my friend had deployed his camping chair in the shade waiting on my return (did I mention it was hot as stink?)


Reinstalled the wheel on the bike and off we went back to the hotel with just enough time to get cleaned up and walk over to the Akron Rubber Duckies game which was in a very nice ball part with reasonably crappy hot dogs.










Remember at the beginning I mentioned that we had a rating system for minor league ball park hot dogs. We use baseball analogies and this is how I rated the dog in Akron:

This dog is like the aging veteran that has been released from the team he's played for for many years but feels like he still has another year in him. He gets signed and ends up in the starting rotation and feels like he's really got something to prove. He gets up to bat and hits a sharp line drive to the left field corner and gets thrown out trying to stretch it in to a double." In other words disappointing.

[wildbears]

The Columbus Clippers have a Dime A Dog Night. Not sure how they are rated....

[Susan]

What is the green stuff? No chili, no slaw, no mustard, no onions. Making a sad face here.

[Pittsdriverwes]

It's just mustard and pickle relish. One of the things that affect our review is the selection of high quality condiments which were sadly lacking at this ball park.

[Pittsdriverwes]

A word about my riding buddy on this and many past adventures. He and I have known each other since the 9th grade when our motorcycle antics began. We were hooligans in high school up to all kinds of mischief but almost never got caught (and never went to jail). He went off to college at BYU and became a card carrying Mormon who eventually became the a Bishop in the LDS church. One of the things we've done on many of our rides has been to take side trips to see sights of significance to the LDS church folks which I actually find pretty interesting. He estimates that I've seen more historical sights than about 99% of all Mormons. Anywho, that's my way of introducing the next place we went on Thursday morning to the little town of Kirtland OH where some particularly divine appearances were said to have happened at the temple there. The temple is a historical sight and not a consecrated holy place so it can be toured:





The Mormon church really does have a fascinating story behind it and it's been interesting to me to have learned a lot about the history of it.

OK, now that we've visited a place of spiritual significance it was time to go dive in to Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll at the Hall of Fame for that.





The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has tons of memorabilia of just about anyone that's ever played a tune and was an interesting couple of hours if you like this kind of stuff. Like hey, there's the jacket Michael Jackson wore in the Thriller video:





It was pretty cool but I suspected we weren't going to think this was a the highlight of our week. We blasted out of Cleveland on the slab to get to Toledo in time for dinner and to catch another minor leave game: the Toledo Mud Hens (or Durty Birds as the locals call them). On the way down the interstate it started looking very dark. Then it started to rain. Nasty sideways blowing rain. We ended up stopping under an overpass. It was that sporty that riding in it seemed imprudent. It was over in about 45 minutes and we got to Toledo in plenty of time to get cleaned up, out to probably the best meal we had in Ohio, and and exciting high scoring shootout of a baseball game. Alas, no hot dog here as I was stuffed from the meal we'd had before entering the game.










Nice ball park that you could see from my hotel room on the 15th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn:

[Pittsdriverwes]

Once a year out in a place called Put-In-Bay Ohio they have something they like to call a Pyrate Festival. This year it was Friday - Sunday when we woke up on Friday morning in Toledo. That serendipitous timing was not to be denied so off we went for the trip out on to an island in Lake Erie:





After breakfast at a pirate bar:




We went for a walk around town. The actual festival wasn't to officially begin until Friday evening and we had other places to be but we took in the island:















Put-in-Bay is a nice enough place to spend a day but jeez, they're really proud of the ferry ride out and back: $50 each for bike & rider. Since this was a pirate thing going on - and since I happen to own a boat - we went looking for a Jolly Roger flag I could fly when we go out in to Annapolis Ego Alley on Halloween dressed at pirates throwing candy to kids along the dock there. Not a single flag was to be found on the entire island - and we looked everywhere. Meh, how can you seriously call yourself a festival for pirates without a single flag to be on sale there?

We jumped back on the ferry to mainland Ohio for the next leg of our adventure: The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield OH - the place that one of the greatest movies of all time was filmed: Shawshank Redemption.

[Pittsdriverwes]

Touring this place I felt was the real highlight of our lap around Ohio. If you're at all a fan of the movie or the book you will not be disappointed by the self guided tour of this place. I'm just going to let the photos tell the story:





The stairs that were descended by Andy and the warden when he was trying to get funds for the prison library:
















The hotel room scenes were filmed in this set:











This is the prop for the scene where Andy is "crawling through 500 yards of sewage" to freedom.














Yeah, I know. This is supposed to be a motorcycle ride report and I'll get to that but it really is one of the best movies ever made and the architecture and preservation of this place is quite amazing.

[Pittsdriverwes]

Given that we both wanted to be back home by Sunday evening, we left Mansfield and ended up at a hotel just east of Columbus Ohio (where we just missed another storm after checking in there). After checking in I ran out to get gas and made it back just in time. After being in a different hotel every night for the week I went back up and couldn't remember my room number and had to go back down to the front desk to embarrassingly ask. Turns out I was at the proper room but my key wasn't working. We had an OK Mexican meal across the parking lot and turned in early.

My friend had more than a hundred miles more than me to get home so he took off about 5am just as the sky was starting to lighten. I rolled out about 7:30 and planned a fun ride home back through West Virginia thinking I'd stop somewhere along the way Saturday night. I rode out going east to Zanesville to hook on to the top end of the Triple Nickel (US 555) and stopped at the saloon for the proof photo:




I have to say that going south from there was a bit of a disappointment and that they road was just OK but it was absolutely covered in tar snakes making every turn a wiggle correcting moment. A dozen or so miles later the road got nice and twisty and became a real roller coaster with very sharp elevation changes and hill crests that would sometime surprise me changing direction sharply just over the hill. I got to the bottom end where it dead ends in to US 50 and stopped to get the Mile 0 photo:





From here I had a choice. I could dive off in to some of the best scenic and twisty back roads of West Virginia and likely making it a two day affair to get home from here; or, I could stay on US50 going east which, once you get fully in to WV, is actually a very nice and sometimes very twisty road itself. I chose the latter thinking that if the heat doesn't get me I might actually get home Saturday night. I stayed on US 50 stopping occasionally to swap out my cooling scarf, grabbing something cold to drink and getting refueled until I arrived about 3pm back in Romney WV. The Q place was busy with people sitting outside in 95 degree heat so screw that, I stopped in a nice little place called the Italian Touch in Romney for a very good cheesesteak and salad.

I sat there in the air conditioning for quite a while just making sure I was recovered and then set my sights on home by way of Harper's Ferry skipping the traffic in both DC and Baltimore. It was a pretty uneventful ride until just after Winchester Va when God showed up again with lightning strikes all around and drops hitting my visor. Rain suit on and blasted on through it and able to come out of my rain gear just over the Potomac River the other side of Harper's Ferry. I arrived home to an empty house about 6:30 and got my bike, gear and clothes all sorted before my wife got home from her gig and my college age daughter returned from work.

Post mortum: We saw some pretty interesting things and checked off a couple of real bucket list things like the Halls of Fame and the Toledo Mud Hens game and I'd say if those things aren't on your bucket list somewhere you should consider adding them. Was it worth riding in sweltering heat all week to ramble around Ohio? I'd have to say yes owing mainly to my cooler/cooling scarf method of combating the heat and the quality of the sights we saw. A fun place to ride a motorcycle it is not - well, other than the southeast corner of the state which by all accounts probably should have also been owned by West By God Virginia. Also, while riding back and forth across WV a lot of times the road was shaded and up at a little altitude was a bit cooler making that back and forth across that state the most enjoyable motorcycling of the week.

[Susan]

There is some road that they call the Windy 9. The triple nickel is quite the roller coaster road!

[Capnrip]

Nice Wes. Thanks for posting your adventures.