Willie P
09-18-2011, 12:52 PM
I've read about these roads on other sites and decided to give a couple a try on Saturday (17 Sep).
Left Pittsburgh mid morning in cooler temps and took mainly backroads out through Carnegie, Mcdonald and past Burgettstown (alt WV 27 wasn't all that bad, but going down through Bethany WV is nicer). Anyway, boring old WV 2 South into Wheeling and US40 up to St. Clairsville for lunch at a diner.
Was looking for OH 26 and turned South (left) onto County 26 which was a cowpath about 10 miles West of SC on US40. I ran about 15 miles of this in a Porsche about five years ago and remember it as a fun road. This is one of the roads I heard some good things about. To my delight it eventually turned into OH 26.
There is a lot of new pavement. I thought this was a 30 mile run to Marietta with a bunch of curves. WAS I WRONG! It was 70 miles, over 100 turns - many of them big sweepers and many, many more were tight decreasing radius turns. There were not many (if any) decreasing radius turns. Better than the turns was the constant elevation changes and small whoopdees. Better than that...wait for it...on a Saturday afternoon - I counted only SIX cars either direction on the whole 70 miles! Much of this road skirts a National Forest - very scenic.
After Marietta and some North riding (about 45 miles unfortunately on WV 2 ...North this time). I picked up WV 7 heading East to Morgantown. GREAT ROAD AGAIN. this road runs a very narrow creek (French Creek) valley with high ravine. I thought this would be tight, technical - turns out, it has big sweepers and I could run many of them 70 mph+ and could gun up to 80/90 on some of the mini straights between them. Even cooler was the rock walls on each side of you. I ran this only to Hundred WV (which is basically the Southern Terminus of PA 18 and you can run that all the way up to Washington, PA). ...or you can take US250 North up toward Moundsville (I ran that in the Porsche again a few years back - and that was an amazing road as well). The run from wv2(ohio river) to Hundred was 30 miles and it's another 30 miles to Mo-town from there.
I took it pretty easy from Hundred up to WashPA and then onto i79N where there was a HEINOUS traffic jam I narrowly avoided.
All told for the day 337 miles. Not bad.
Highly recommend OH26 and WV7 as they are only a couple hours from home for us PGH riders. Next time- the vaunted OH 555 and 536.
Left Pittsburgh mid morning in cooler temps and took mainly backroads out through Carnegie, Mcdonald and past Burgettstown (alt WV 27 wasn't all that bad, but going down through Bethany WV is nicer). Anyway, boring old WV 2 South into Wheeling and US40 up to St. Clairsville for lunch at a diner.
Was looking for OH 26 and turned South (left) onto County 26 which was a cowpath about 10 miles West of SC on US40. I ran about 15 miles of this in a Porsche about five years ago and remember it as a fun road. This is one of the roads I heard some good things about. To my delight it eventually turned into OH 26.
There is a lot of new pavement. I thought this was a 30 mile run to Marietta with a bunch of curves. WAS I WRONG! It was 70 miles, over 100 turns - many of them big sweepers and many, many more were tight decreasing radius turns. There were not many (if any) decreasing radius turns. Better than the turns was the constant elevation changes and small whoopdees. Better than that...wait for it...on a Saturday afternoon - I counted only SIX cars either direction on the whole 70 miles! Much of this road skirts a National Forest - very scenic.
After Marietta and some North riding (about 45 miles unfortunately on WV 2 ...North this time). I picked up WV 7 heading East to Morgantown. GREAT ROAD AGAIN. this road runs a very narrow creek (French Creek) valley with high ravine. I thought this would be tight, technical - turns out, it has big sweepers and I could run many of them 70 mph+ and could gun up to 80/90 on some of the mini straights between them. Even cooler was the rock walls on each side of you. I ran this only to Hundred WV (which is basically the Southern Terminus of PA 18 and you can run that all the way up to Washington, PA). ...or you can take US250 North up toward Moundsville (I ran that in the Porsche again a few years back - and that was an amazing road as well). The run from wv2(ohio river) to Hundred was 30 miles and it's another 30 miles to Mo-town from there.
I took it pretty easy from Hundred up to WashPA and then onto i79N where there was a HEINOUS traffic jam I narrowly avoided.
All told for the day 337 miles. Not bad.
Highly recommend OH26 and WV7 as they are only a couple hours from home for us PGH riders. Next time- the vaunted OH 555 and 536.