If you've been following along on my Budget Adventure Bike thread, you may have seen me prepping for a pretty big trip:
First up, the goal: Complete the Georgia Adventure Trail. Johnny and I plan to ride the entire 580-mile, mostly off-road trail and camp along the way.
Good news: I did it, survived, and had an amazing time. Time to document it!
First up, we needed a plan. I'm in Daytona Beach, Florida, while my friend Johnny lives near Road Atlanta. Each end of the GAT is two hours from one of our houses, so the question was just "Which direction should we ride in?"
We decided to run the trail north to south, since I had more free time at the beginning of the trip to make the transit, and that way we'd skip the flatter/hotter/less scenic southern section if we ran out of time. We set aside four days for this journey: I'd ride from Daytona to Braselton, meet up with Johnny, ride the trail south, then ride home while he hopped on the highway to head back north.
So, let's start the trip.
Day 1: Daytona Beach, Florida to Braselton, Georgia
After a few iterations, I finally managed to cram four days worth of clothing/camping gear/emergency gear/tools/etc. onto this bike.
I ran out of time to do a proper road test before leaving for the trip, so not only would this day be the longest I'd ever ridden a motorcycle ever, it would also be the first time I'd ridden the BMW since bolting all my crap onto it.
And, well, it did great! Here's a rest stop one hour in:
And here's a Buc-ee's five hours in:
The highway isn't the most fun way to travel on a motorcycle, but I figured it was way safer to be on a road with controlled access and fewer intersections. Plus, I wanted to get to Atlanta as quickly as possible to start the "real" trip.
So how's the G650GS on the highway? Well... meh. It's not slow--cruising at 75 mph is no problem, and there's still plenty of power leftover for passing. But it is buzzy, and I cruised at 70 mph for a smoother ride and clear mirrors. Life in the slow lane was shockingly fine; I cruised along all day seeing the sights and smelling the smells of a long day on the road. I've never really traveled big long distances by motorcycle before, and it was really cool.
I did discover the BMW's main party trick: Fuel mileage. I got 50 mpg cruising down the highway, which I thought was pretty good. With a four gallon tank, that makes my fuel range 200 miles.
After suffering through rush hour traffic in Atlanta, I made it to Braselton just before dark. Here's my bike wedged into Johnny's garage for the night:
And here's a selfie where I tried to capture the feeling of riding through Atlanta traffic:
Nearly 500 miles in, and I'd only made it to the start of the trip. The real adventure starts on day 2....
You missed an opportunity to call this thread Short Way Down.
Nicole Suddard said:You missed an opportunity to call this thread Short Way Down.
Good point. Fixed!
So, uhhh... Day 2?
In reply to Mr_Asa :
New post coming soon - Sorry to break the fourth wall, but Tom has been extremely busy prepping and traveling for One Lap of America. He's working on finding time to post the next part.
Day Two: Braselton, GA to Tallulah River, NC to South of Athens, GA
All the preparation had finally paid off: We were going adventure riding!!
Here are our bikes loaded up for departure. Johnny has a very, uh, anti-GRM approach when it comes to motorcycles, and that's his new Harley Pan America special with Harley bags and Harley monthly payments. I'm not a Harley guy, but I have to admit it's one of the coolest bikes I've ever seen.
We hit the road and started the two-hour drive up to the start of the Georgia Adventure Trail. Highway turned into two-lane roads turned into dirt roads turned into water crossings, and finally we were in North Carolina at the beginning of the trip.
The first miles of trail were some of the most beautiful roads I've ever seen. Winding gravel roads through mountains and along lakeshores gradually carried us south, then 56 minutes into the trip I crashed.
Oops--we'd made it just 20 miles before I screwed up. I'd never ridden a bike this big, heavy, and powerful off road before, and simply got too comfortable and forgot what I was dealing with. That's how I found myself underneath it after a 10 mph low side going up a gravel switchback.
The bike fell directly onto my ankle, then chewed it up a little bit as the bike and I both ground to a halt. Johnny kindly picked the bike up a few inches so I could wiggle out from underneath and assess my injuries. Shoutout to those soft panniers for not presenting any hard edges for me to catch my leg on.
Good news: I was fine. Safety gear is important, and I'd just gotten my money's worth. A crash that would have certainly caused a sprained ankle or worse in street shoes became a minor inconvenience thanks to armored boots. And shoutout to those soft panniers for not presenting any hard edges for me to catch my leg on.
What about the injuries to the bike? The news was good on that front, too: None. Between the bark busters, skid plate, crash bars and panniers, there wasn't so much as a scratch and all my levers were fine.
Here I am back on the bike two minutes after laying it down:
Okay, time to keep going. We continued riding through some of the most beautiful country I've seen:
Then we got hungry and decided to ride towards the nearest town for lunch.
Nicole Suddard said:In reply to Mr_Asa :
New post coming soon - Sorry to break the fourth wall, but Tom has been extremely busy prepping and traveling for One Lap of America. He's working on finding time to post the next part.
Sometimes I forget that some of the folks here get to go do track rat E36 M3 with their track rat friends. My bad.
Oops--looks like I forgot to update this thread for a while. Sorry about that!
I don't remember exactly where this was, but by this point I was getting pretty good at water crossings. Hooray for that high intake--the BMW sucks air from behind the headlight thanks to a built-in snorkel.
We rode through scenery like this for hours:
And here's Johnny turning around because I stopped following him:
As we went south, the mountains were fading and the roads were improving. We spent a few hours on roads like this:
Then we realized it was starting to get pretty dark. We stopped to make a plan a few hours before sunset:
We were headed into a national forest with plenty of dispersed camping, so we took a quick detour to a grocery store to buy a few steaks. We'd be roughing it tonight, primitive camping and grilling over an open fire.
Then, well, I stopped stopping for photos. It started to get dark--fast--and we went faster and faster trying to beat the light. We stopped on the side of the road at a primitive site minutes before it got too dark to ride, and ended up setting up camp with headlamps. This iPhone photo doesn't do a great job of showing how dark it was, but look how blurry I am for an idea:
We cooked dinner over the fire, sat back, and stared at the stars. It was one of the coolest days I'd ever had.
Also, we should have brought plates. I ate my steak out of a cup.
Day Three: Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest to Fitzgerald, Georgia
How well do you sleep after riding a dirt bike all day, falling, then curling up in backpacking gear?
Honestly, awesome! I slept like a rock, and woke up to this. We weren't exactly glamping.
I made some nearly undrinkable coffee, then we hit the road.
We were feeling seriously gross after a day and a half in the woods, so we started scouting for a place to swim. We found a kayak launch in the middle of nowhere, and decided it would be a decent place to cool off, too.
The water was probably 60 degrees and full of rocks, but I felt like a new person getting back on the bike afterwards. Success!
Then I fell over doing a U-turn. Oops.
Hey look, another water crossing:
The roads seemed to be getting better and better as we went south, as seriously treacherous gravel had given way to these smooth, fast, easy roads. We were getting way too confident...
Cooking in the woods had been fun, but ultimately sort of terrible. We decided to hit a restaurant for dinner, and detoured to downtown Macon for burgers. I'm sure we didn't look out of place at all, dressed like filthy stormtroopers and riding dirtbikes.
After dinner, we figured we would ride for another hour or so on easy roads, then find another primitive campsite and call it a night.
The universe had other plans:
Somehow, that was the last photo I took before we stopped for the night. And it's also the moment right before that road went to hell. We rode for 10 miles, working harder and harder, as the road got softer, the ruts got deeper, and the whole place started to feel more like Soviet Russia than southern Georgia.
Finally, we hit the impassable part: There was a bridge missing, and the locals had cut a narrow ATV detour through the sandy riverbed, with a 60-degree riverbank on each side. I proposed to Johnny that we work together and try to drag each bike through the creek and continue, but he decided that was stupid and we turned around.
A quick detour later, and we found ourselves going 50 mph on smooth, fast unpaved farm roads. One problem with that: We needed a campsite, and farms are private property. We rode until sunset without passing any public land, then finally saw a family on a UTV stopped on the side of the road.
"Hey, you don't know of any places around here were we could set up our tents for the night, do you?"
"Absolutely! You can camp right down there!"
With that, they gestured down to the river 20' or so below the road. We would have never noticed it if they hadn't been there. With that, the family drove away and Johnny and I were left to make a decision.
We walked down to the riverbank, and were shocked at the amount of human activity--the ground was trampled, there was a trash can full of beer cans, and there was grafitti everywhere. A handmade sign said something like "please respect so and so's creek."
After debating for a few minutes, we decided to keep riding for another mile just to see what we'd be camping next to. We hopped back on the road, and half a mile later we passed a convoy of UTVs going the other direction. They had giant lifts, booming stereos, giant coolers flashing lights, and a dozen or so people in bathing suits hanging all over them.
We weren't in the mood for a giant party, so we kept riding. Finally it got dark and we called it: We'd suck it up and spend the money on a hotel room for our last night on the trail. $70 later, and we'd scratched some furniture and shoved our bikes into a nasty Western Inn motel room. Sleeping in the A/C was nice, but we both agreed it was miserable compared to the woods: We should have stayed by the river.
Day Four: Fitzgerald, Georgia to Jennings, Florida
We woke up without any gunshot wounds, then reality set in: We'd made terrible time, and both of us needed to finish this ride and get home. So we ate at an IHOP and hit the trail. I also barely took any photos today, as we were trying to make time. Sorry!
Right away, we could tell things were going to be worse today. We'd finally made it to the land of sugar sand, as well as warm weather: The temperature broke 90 degrees, and we were hating life as we wrestled these heavy bikes through deep sand all morning. The scenery got pretty boring, too. Yeah, farms are cool and all, but this was looking more like home than some faraway land we were journeying through.
Despite not having much experience in the sand, Johnny managed to keep his Harley upright. He admitted "the only reason I'm still moving is all these nannies saving my ass."
Guess who's bike doesn't have any electronics? Mine. I grew up riding in these conditions on dirtbikes, and sugar sand doesn't scare me. But wresting the BMW, loaded with gear, in the heat, for hour after hour, I started to get tired. And then I started to make mistakes.
Finally, I went down fairly hard at about 1 p.m. on a road I could barely walk down, nevermind ride down. Fortunately the gear did its job again, and I picked the bike up myself, shook the sand out of my clothing, and kept going.
The sand was getting deeper, and we were having to go faster and faster to ride on these roads. Riding a dirtbike in the sand is a lot like driving a boat, as your goal is to float over the sand sort of the same way a boat gets up on a plane. That's not a big deal on a dirtbike, but adventure bikes are seriously heavy. Keeping these bikes up meant riding at speeds that would have real consequences if we fell. And riding slowly meant we'd get stuck or fall anyway.
Johnny and I looked at each other, nodded our heads, and called it: We rode the last hour of the Georgia Adventure Trail on pavement, stopped at the Florida boarder for photos, and declared our mission a success: We'd done it!
How come I don't know about this? I live and work directly there, and traverse a good chunk of it every day!
carry on...
Right? I had no idea it existed until I started doing some research, either.
Ignoring the canoe...
How much of these trails would be possible for a 2WD truck? Its been a while since I have been on an adventure, and I'm kinda curious.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
The answer is "it depends."
In the northern half 99% of the trails would be possible in a 2WD truck, perhaps with a few careful line selections to avoid rocks.
In the southern half, foot-deep sand is the norm on some of the roads. An expert driver could make it in a 2WD truck with a locked differential, but wouldn't be able to stop at any point without digging your way out.
Surprised you only got 50mpg. I regularly got 66-70mpg out of my old Dakar. Did you air down when you were off road? That helps a lot. plus you were carrying a ton of stuff. I try to carry as little as possible. This is what I carried for a 5 day ride around Colorado but with no camping.
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