Connecticut & Massachusetts | NEBDR

I can see on my GPS the dotted line indicating the state line should be coming up any time now. All right so I stopped right here just because I wanted to show you what the state line looks like between New York and Massachusetts. Kind of like a border crossing in a different country but smaller version right here. We've just got a little bit of Massachusetts to go through and then a very little bit of Connecticut. We're only going to go through the extreme northwest corner of Connecticut and then we get back into Massachusetts four a ways. This is probably not what most people think about when they think about traveling along the east coast and yet here we are in Massachusetts riding through the woods. There's no other traffic on the roads. There's no people, no skyscrapers, no buildings. Just pure nature all around us and so you're looking at you know potentially an eight day trip to do the entire northeast BDR. Of course you could break it down into sections and do a little bit here a little bit there. Piece it together over time or if you're lucky and can get the time off just come out and do the entire route. What a fantastic way to see a part of the country that's so urban and so dense. It's a pretty unique opportunity and I highly encourage you to come and check it out with respect. Be kind to the locals, kind to the environment as you travel. Be respectful with your your speed and your spending so that we can keep these opportunities alive for everyone to enjoy. This is Mount Rega and I saw this little spring coming down the side of the road. When you come through here you should stop and fill up your water bottles. I mean you can literally drink this water. Oh man that is good. That is really good. This is so fresh. And you know that's what a backcountry discovery route is all about. It's these little discoveries along the way that make the journey so rewarding. Every time you do a trip like this it can be different. The weather changes, the roads change and so depending on when you come and it can be a completely different journey. So I just wanted to stop and show you guys really quickly this rock wall here. If you're from the east coast this probably doesn't mean that much to you because maybe you see these kind of rock walls all over the place but where I live out west you don't always see like these kind of dry stack stone walls and this one is really cool because it just goes for like a hundred yards or longer. So I can't even imagine all the work finding these stones and putting them in one by one because it's one of those things that just flies by you and you need to stop and appreciate these things on a backcountry discovery route because that's what it's all about. So maybe you'll see this rock wall right here and stop and take a picture just like I am. Now I'm heading up to an area called October Mountain. So if you were going to try to piece together this route yourself it would take a lot of work and a really long time. You might come out on your motorcycle and see signs like this that say that it's not a through route that you can't go through. What the BDR has done is taken all the legwork out of putting a route like this together so now it's just as easy as going and downloading a GPS track and getting out and doing it yourself. You can trust that it's all been carefully plotted out for you ahead of time and you can just go and enjoy it. Oh yeah now we're getting somewhere. This is getting rocky. This is the most fun I've had on this route yet. Some mud, some ruts. This is a good little 4x4 road. Big puddle. Should we go through the middle of it? There we go. I always feel like I want to be just a little bit careful after going through a big mud puddle because the tires are still going to be wet for just a little while and if you come out of that big mud puddle and you come across some rocks and give it too much gas you could really spin your tires out until they kind of dry off a bit. Wow this is really rocky here. This is cool. It's a rocky incline with a creek running down the middle of it. A little bit of water. Yes this is definitely the most fun we've had yet on this route. Standing up second gear smooth and steady. Bear in mind too that I'm on a 1200 GS with two metal panniers, extra luggage on top of each pannier, a tripod, and a big camera bag on the seat behind me so I'm pretty latened down. I'm trying to take it respectively smooth which I normally do and it's served me well for many years. There are definitely a lot of guys that ride harder and faster but for me slow and steady gets me there. That last section was the bomb. Definitely the most fun I've had on this trip yet. 10 to 20 miles of riding through the forest. Rocky, loose, slippery, ruts, logs, a little bit of everything. It wasn't too hard. Don't get your hopes up. It's not a super challenging section but that said it was definitely the most technical section so far. Whoa just about went over that way. It's getting a little slippery. There's some kind of like some ruts down in this grass and it's really hard to tell what your front wheel is doing and where it's at. Interesting choice of roads scouting team. I kind of doubt this one will be on the route. Oh it's buggy down in here. It's got to go somewhere. Hopefully not to a meth lab. I hope it's sturdy. Give it a go. Okay we made it. It's hard to say how much of this we have to do before we get out of here but a rough guess on the gps could be about five miles. The hardest part about this is that you just can't see the ground so you don't know if there's like rocks or sticks or a rut which there are quite a few of. I bet you I'm just probably crawling with ticks on the outside of my riding suit by now. There's no harm in tipping over like this. It's going to happen on your ride especially when you get into this kind of technical stuff and you're going slow and this stuff here was not easy to ride through because you can't see your front wheel. You can't see what your tires are connecting with and there's ruts under the grass and they're slippery and it's wet and it's it's kind of like riding blind. So anyways we got maybe five miles of this more to do so we're going to just keep forwarding ahead and see what comes up next. Secretly that was super fun. I don't know that they're going to put it on the actual route because it sort of seems like it could be on private property. Oh they just laid some gravel down here. Sometimes you get into it and it's three or four inches thick. It's like riding in sand but it's gravel. We have traveled 488 miles since the beginning of this route. We've made it to the top of Greylock Mountain in Massachusetts. This is the highest point in Massachusetts at almost 3,500 feet of elevation. From here you can see 360 degrees. There's the Bascom Lodge. That's a great place to stay up here on the top of the summit. It's a little bit spendy but it has a good restaurant in there. Really good accommodations. Kind of an old lodge feeling. It was built in the 1930s. This building here is Massachusetts Monument to Fallen Soldiers. We're taking the paved road down from the summit. Yesterday afternoon we drove up the dirt road. It's a classic summertime scene. You'll be riding along and you'll see a vegetable stand on the side of the road. Cucumbers for sale, squash for sale, whatever for sale. A dollar, two dollars, three dollars. Put it in the bucket. It's all based on the honor system and it happens out in the country and small towns all across America. Sort of big chunky rocks that I'm riding on. They're very angular and big. Roycroft Outlook to the right. We're on Raycroft Road. Road closed to through traffic. The sign said you could never blindly follow what your GPS says. You always have to have your your brain in action and put both of those factors together. Although when you have a track like you're provided with from the Backcountry Discovery Routes, generally speaking you want to follow that track. That's the whole point of a track. But of course sometimes things change. Weather can close roads. Roads could be closed for maintenance or they could just be changed to... any number of things can force you to deviate from the track. Well I hope that you're enjoying this video and getting something out of it as we take a look at the Northeast BDR. Thanks for sticking around. Thanks for watching this. If you like this video, come back for more. There will be several more episodes of the Northeast BDR on this channel as I continue to ride the entire route from New York all the way up into Maine.