In West Virginia for the annual West Virginia State Folk Festival.

Beth and I journeyed back to Glenville, WV for a weekend of family fun with my cousin Kelly (Campbell) Jansen and her family, camping in Cedar Creek State Park and off-roading on Kelly's property in the nearby mountains.





Tom Weaver, Kelly's SO, his son Brode and I spent Saturday riding motorcycles and 4 wheelers on the mountain trails while Beth took cousins Lynsey, Kelsey, Zeke and his friend Paul Akers mudding with the Tacoma. I followed their tracks later and noted that she drove though some mud holes that I probably would not have gone into. Oh the joy of youthful ignorance.



All the vehicles survived but I am pretty sore as I had a couple of low speed get-offs on the DR650. I even managed to get a picture of the bike sleeping after one uphill wipeout. The tree it is resting against is all that is keeping it from a fifty foot drop off.



The GPS tracks are here and the Google Earth (KMZ) file can be downloaded here

On the left side in Google Maps, expand tracks and you can deselect/select certain tracks to be displayed.

- The red line is the ride into town from Cedar Creek.
- The lighter red, orange and yellow lines are the trip to the property that Brode and I took early in the day from the Lynch Run side.
- The green lines show the route I took following Beth in the truck.
- The light green lines shows where I went from the Rock Riffle side back to the Lynch run entrance after being unable to climb the hill to the property. This is also where the DR650 took the dirt nap pictured above.
- The blue lines are short rides up on the property.
- The purple lines are a trip up to the top of Hiney Hill and back into town.

You cannot imagine how difficult these "roads" were as West Virginia county roads aren't quite the same thing as in other states. They make the dirt roads in Delaware look positively modern.

West Virginia has this curious habit of routing a "road" down a rocky creek bed if it is convenient. The more civilized portions of these so-called "roads" consists of two muddy, foot-deep ruts usually bounded on one side by a steep hillside and on the other by the afore-mentioned creek bed. Next time up I will take more pictures of these



All pictures can be found here in the Flickr set "WV Folk Festival 2009".


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Jeff Stevenson

Home again, home again... after 850 miles.

Pictures from the entire trip are here.

GPS track is here.

Left the hotel in Glenville, WV around noon:

Stopped at an overlook somewhere between Holly, WV and Guardian, WV:

On top of Spruce Knob, WV:

1st half of the day:

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2nd half of the day:

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We ended up rolling back into Gaithersburg, MD around 11:00 pm. That's 11 hrs....we were tired. . Jeff Stevenson

Today was spent sleeping late, eating lunch at the local Glenville, WV restaurant and riding the local back roads.

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West Virginia is a great place to ride- smooth roads, no traffic, no police to speak of, beautiful scenery.

Beth finished up her last exams for the year and we decided to just get on the Triumph and go to West Virginia.

You can follow us here:Where Am I?

The trip plan is here:http://tinyurl.com/prvphb

This morning we left Gaithersburg around 9:30. I told Beth to pack light, that all she needed was a change of underwear so she brought 3 pair and that's it. Gotta love a girl like that.



We rode Rt. 40 (Old National Pike) from Frederick, stopping for lunch in Frostburg before heading to Ohiopyle.



I expected to find more to do there but really it's only a little (very little) town that sits on a river. If you want to mountain bike or white water raft, this is your place.



Since Beth and I could not figure out how to get the Triumph into a raft we decided to ride on. We did make a short stop at Fort Necessity, a place I remember going to as a kid.



We pushed on, taking a nice little road along the ridge line east of Uniontown, PA. The only problem was that the road turned into gravel/dirt and we did not happen to be on the bike made for gravel/dirt. The Triumph does not handle well on dirt. Beth was nervous.

Interstate 79 to some (twisty) back road to Glenville, WV, a place I fondly remember visiting as a kid.



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Jeff Stevenson

The girls and I spent some time in the courtyard garden again this year, adding plants and re-potting others.

All photos are here.







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Jeff Stevenson

Mackenzie finished 4th out of 22 throwers in the girl's discus throw at the Montgomery County Championship Track and Field meet this past week, throwing a personal best 85' 8" after tossing an 85' 5" in the previous attempt.

Mackenzie moves up to 2nd highest MoCo Junior so next year looks promising for her.

The 4A West Regional Championships are 5/13/09 and 5/14/09 @ Magruder HS. Mackenzie has a good chance to be in the top 3 and qualify for States.

Go to http://www.mocorunning.com/meet.php?meet_id=1129 and scroll down to Girls Discus Throw to see the results.

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Mackenzie finished 5th out of 21 throwers in the girl's discus throw at the Urbana Invitational this past weekend, earning valuable points for her team and helping the girls to a 6th place finish out of 12 teams. She threw 81 feet even, a personal record and another step in her consistent progression.

Her teammate Marcus Brown threw 165' in the boy's discus - furthest throw by a Montgomery County athlete in at least a decade.

Go to http://www.mocorunning.com/meet.php?meet_id=1126 and scroll down to Girls Discus Throw to find the results.

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This past weekend my cousin Cindy (Campbell) Brown and her husband Pat brought their kids Parker and Mackinzie to visit Washington, DC. We rode the metro in to the National Zoo and saw lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!

We did not, however, see a Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill nor a Bippo-No-Bungus.

The entire photoset is here on Cindy's Flickr account.









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Mackenzie had the long throw in Girl's Discus event at the Quince Orchard vs. Damascus division meet this past Tuesday in Damascus.

Her throw of 74' 0" outdistanced all other girl throwers and earned her team valuable points.

Mackenzie is on target for another fun and successful year.


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Mackenzie is doing Track and Field again this year, continuing her participation from the last two years. She is throwing the discus and has picked up where she left off last year, opening the season with a 75 foot toss at this weekend's Cougar Relays.

Mackenzie combined with her teammate Alexis Dudley to win the Girl's Discus event with both girls throwing in the 70's.

The Quince Orchard Track and Field event schedule can be found here. If you are able, come out and support the Stevenson family's favorite discus thrower.

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