Memorial Day Ride

Monday promised to be a great day and even though we thought the holiday traffic may be heavy we opted to ride to Beaufort. We started out at about 10:30 or so and headed to Beaufort down 70 East. The traffic was fairly normal and by 11:30 we were at the Beaufort waterfront.


What a surprise to see that every parking space was taken along the downtown waterfront area. Doing a slow cruise down the street we saw a wonderful sign: Motorcycle parking only. And there in one slot was a BMW 1200 GS. We decided it would improve the BMW's image to be seen in the company of a Harley-Davidson so we assumed the second slot.









Once we stowed the gear we headed to Clawson's for some lunch.




We had a brief stroll along the nearby waterfront, checked out a couple of shops and decided to ride to the public launching ramp at the far end of Front Street.






At that end of Front Street the Live Oaks create a canopy over the road way. I often wondered how many of these very trees knew of the real Blackbeard.






We enjoyed the bustle of activity while some families launched their boats and others were returning from a few hours on the water.






We headed down Lennoxville Road next just to see the sights. We were impressed with the very large homes that have been built recently with more on the way. Talk about high end real estate!

Leaving Beaufort we rode Highway 101 and decided to take a detour down Adam's Creek Road. I had not been down in this part of Craven County in more than 30 years. We followed the 12 mile winding road only to find it dead ended at a small strip of beach on the Intracoastal Waterway locally referred to as Adam's Creek.













We had the beach to ourselves and quite a few photos later we headed back to New Bern.










While we missed the majority of the traffic by running 101 instead of 70 we caught up to the mass exodus to the west when we hit Havelock. By the time we made the James City traffic lights it was stop and go through the lights.






The Ultra showed us the amount of heat she generates from her 96 cubic inch engine in that stopped traffic as the early summer temperatures were in the upper 80's. We now have 2100 miles on the odometer, not bad for four months of riding and most of that winter weather.