Random thoughts: 2013 Hot Buttered Goat Rally

Connie and I rode the 2013 Hot Buttered Goat Rally on Saturday, 31 August 2013. The rally was organized by our friend Jonathan “Hammy” Tan, and it was tremendously fun.

The format was a bit different from other rallies, in that each rider could select a start point (we all ended at Yoder’s Country Market in New Holland, PA).

Because we were starting the day in Northern Virginia, and we didn’t want to ride farther north to start, I elected to start at the southern-most bonus location, which was located in Dover, DE.

Instead of a rally flag, we brought a “mascot”, who would be in every photograph with Connie (the usual rule is that if a passenger is riding the rally, the passenger must be in every photograph). Our rally was Connie’s otter that rode with me on the 2012 Butt Lite.

We started at the Dover International Speedway, at the statue of Miles the Monster. We had planned to visit Miles some time back, but bad weather intervened, and we headed back to Virginia (through a thunderstorm). So, it was nice to make the stop this time, and collect the photograph of my lovely and talented assistant, our mascot, and Miles.

From Dover, we rode to Smyrna, DE to find Helen’s Famous Sausage House which, regrettably, was closed for the weekend. The fellow in the red car, below, was just hanging out in the parking lot, fascinated, I’m sure, by suited-up motorcycle riders stopping by to take photographs. Other hopeful patrons arrived while we were taking our photograph; they, too, were disappointed at the closure.

Our next stop was the Reedy Island range rear light (more information here).

Next, we were off to Greenville, DE to visit the sign outside the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory (who knew there was a mountain in Delaware, much less one named Mt. Cuba?) .

A little ways down the road, we were to find a gate with a very nice deer motif (this is the way we like to see deer – frozen in time). The neighborhood behind this gate was somewhat different that the neighborhoods that we would be riding through just a few hours later.

This large, brightly-painted storage tank sits near the Philadelphia city line. We enjoyed the gravel at the parking spot, and the two extra bridge transits we needed to make to get this photograph.

We had all KINDS of fun getting around Philadelphia!

I made a bad turn out of the storage tank photograph location, which sent us south across the Schuylkill River (again), which was okay since we needed to find a spot for refreshment. I didn’t find an on-ramp for I-95, so we were in for a very long slog across town to find Johnny’s Hots (in a truly forgettable part of Philadelphia). Ugh.

From Johnny’s Hots, we needed to head west to find the Turtle Rock Light. To get there, we needed to navigate Philadelphia streets (and I was already off-route, so navigation with two GPS receivers was exciting).

Who knew that Fitz & The Tantrums would be playing on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, at just about the time we were trying to get through that part of town? No wonder all the streets were blocked off!

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were playing somewhere in that expanse of green on the map, below.

Finally! We arrived at Turtle Rock Light (which is a place to which we want to return, because Fairmount Park is a great ride).

Merrymead Farm was our next destination, where we needed a photograph of homemade peanut butter.

Green Sargeant’s Covered Bridge was our next stop. This is also a virtual geocache, so we got a two-fer here.

We headed to Northlandz (more here and here and here) next, to see the train station adjacent to the museum.

We were running a bit behind plan, so we dropped our anticipated visit to the New Jersey Astronomical Association Observatory in High Bridge, NJ and Hot Dog Johnny’s (more here) in Buttzville, NJ. Based on the TripAdvisor® rating (ranked #1 restaurant in Buttzville at the time of this writing), we’ll need to plan a trip to get some dogs and some birch beer.

Our next stop was the Butter Valley Golf Port, where I managed to get a photograph of the wrong sign. Sigh. Connie and our mascot look great, though.

Our next stop(s) were in Boyertown, PA, where we were to take photographs of bears. Lots of bears. We could get one point for each bear, up to a maximum of 30 points. We were able to get more than one bear per minute, so these were much more efficient than they would have appeared.

I wanted to make sure we visited this one, which was out last bear of the day.

The Driebelbis Covered Bridge (more here) was our next stop.

The big points (1000) were at Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. We needed a shot of the goat jumping in mid-air. We must have made quite a sight, striding purposefully through Cabela’s, in search of a jumping goat (and Connie, with her helmet in place).