The Case of the Missing Camera

(Oct. 14) The weather has finally cleared up. It rained all night long, so the roads were still a bit wet, but turned out to be a great day. This was to be our longest day because from our camp site, the plan was to reach Lee County, the farthest county in the Southwestern Virginia. As part of our goal to ride all the counties, this trip is capturing a bunch of counties in this whole area.

Lee County, Va.

Again, we decided to change our planned route a bit, but still had a long day, about 240 miles or so. The GPS did get us a little confused at one point with a requested turn into a hill that had a railroad on top. Should have taken a photo of that. If you looked hard enough, you could see that there might have been a road there a very long time ago.

Day 4 route

As part of our change, we saw another one of the dirt roads that crossed over a mountain, so we decided to take that for fun. Just a short 5-mile road, but still full of fun. 

The mountain range we would ride over

This was the only day that I had any issues and dropped my bike twice. Remember how in my first blog of this trip that I said I forgot my good camera so pictures will be with either the GoPro or my phone. Well... the truth is I couldn't find my camera before I left for our motorcycle rally in Virginia Beach the weekend before this trip. After riding my motorcycle about 900 miles, some on the Interstate at high speed and some on dirt roads, I dropped my bike and wouldn't you know, the camera falls out onto the ground. I was like, "What?" 

Should have gotten a picture with the bike on its side,

but Steve is always so quick to pick it back up for me. :)

dirty camera

I'm guessing I placed the camera on top of one of my boxes and it slid off and got lodged somewhere under the seat or something, where I couldn't see it. So, 900 miles later, two days of pouring rain, the camera is covered with dirt, and guess what? It still works. Unbelievable. It's a Cannon PowerShot SX210 IS.

Proof the camera still works

But here's the real proof. The Sexy shot. :)

I took a video of some of the dirt riding with the GoPro attached to the engine guard. Pretty cool. At the end of this clip is video of my second drop at the end of the dirt road. By then, some condensation started appearing on the weatherproof case the camera is in, so it's a little blurry, but still pretty obvious what happens. I did try to lift it myself this time, and almost had it, but I couldn't get good traction with my feet. My boots kept slipping in the mud. But I think if I really had to, I could have done it.

This was another great day. We didn't get back to camp until about 6 p.m. so the dogs were very happy to see us.

Photo with the phone

Photo with the long-lost Canon

This is a close up of the dirt road on the map. I think it was called Tower road.