Wild Hogs III Day 1 The Tradition Continues

Well The day finally arrived and on Wed. morning 7/13 our Wild Hogs III adventure began. Though there was no rain predicted at either our start point or our destination as of that morning, it seems that the day one tradition of getting rained on held true again this year. We left about 1/2 hour late (as usual). We met the two brothers from the Lancaster area at the Bethal exit on I-78, then we were off. At our first gas stop I noticed that my hitch for the trailer seemed to be sagging a bit and discovered that when I hit a big bump going through a construction zone I must have sheared off a bolt. It seemed solid enough so I reinforced it against any future big bumps with a ratchet tie down and we were off again.

Of course we hit rain as we passed through the Poconos area. It wasn't terrible but it was of course enough to hog up the bikes pretty well and fulfill our first day tradition of ending up in the rain. We did pretty well once we ran out of the initial burst (took maybe an hour or so). We made a stop in Newburgh, NY at the home of Orange County Choppers. At that point it was sunny and hot. We got lunch in Newburgh, then headed out again. It seemed we had great timing most of the day as we ran through many areas where it had obviously just rained hard, but aside from the road spray, we really didn't see much actual rain (the spray actually felt pretty good in the heat. We hit a lot of traffic in the last 20 miles or so which probably cost us about an hour of travel, but all in all, the trip went relatively smoothly.

We arrived in Salisbury Beach MA at about 7:30 PM and checked in to the state park campground. One of the people in the office said that we had just missed a really nasty storm by an hour or so. We set up camp and decided to go back in to town to a pizza shop we saw when we were passing through. As we waited for our food another storm moved in (not predicted)complete with very heavy rain, thunder and lightning. We ate slowly, and by the time the place was ready to close the rain had stopped. We made our way back to camp at about 10 pm and found that everything had survived fine. Tired from the 450 mile journey of the day we decided to turn in. We got settled in for the night. At about 1 am I woke up to the sound of rain on the tent. It was light and I wasn't concerned. By 1:45 it had built in to a raging thunderstorm with torrential rains and gusting winds and of course the thunder and lightning (always a plus when you are camped on what amounts to an open beach. It passed in about an hour and except for the gusty winds, the cooler temps that came with it were welcome.