Annapolis Ride

With the start of the warmer weather, the motorcycling season is in full swing. Mattigan from Bob's BMW organized this ride for the Casual Ride on June 10, 2007. I dropped by the store a few days before the ride, and Mattigan gave me the route he planned to take.

We met around 10:00am outside the Aroma D'Italia on the Annapolis City Dock. We enjoyed some fresh coffee and snacks and introduced ourselves and took a look at the motorcycles. Our group had three F650GS's, a pair of Goldwings, an F800S, an R1200GS, and an BMW RT. For a complete listing of our trip directions, please click here. The yellow route on the map is the actal path we traveled, and the purple route shows the route using the directions.

There are many ways out of Annapolis, but after driving them, we found that West Street was not a very good choice. Even on the weekends, this road has a lot of traffic and moves pretty slowly. Instead of this route, we headed out on Rowe Boulevard. The congestion around the traffic circle was manageable, and in no time we were up the hill near the Capital.

After we hopped onto Route 50/301 and took Exit 23B (Rowe Boulevard is Exit 24) on Riva Road, we had completed all the highways on our route. After Riva Road crosses the South River, we turned right after about 1.4 miles onto Governor Bridge Road. This point was a bit tricky, but here was where all the great turns began. From this point, we continued on Governor Bridge Road and worked our way to Patuxent River Road. On this stretch of road, we met little traffic, but we did catch a road painting truck. I had not thought of wet paint as a surface hazard, but it could have been a messy pass around this truck if he did not move over to let us pass him. Before proceeding down Patuxent River Road, we stopped to take a look at the Governor Bridge. There is also a nice park just after the bridge, but we decided not to stop here.

We continued to work our way southward until we reached Route 4 where we briefly left the turns for a short segment of straight road (the directions avoided this part). We reentered the back roads and headed toward Chesapeake Beach. Since we were so close to the water, we took a quick break here to enjoy the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. We stopped by a local hotel and looked out over the water. North Beach Park is also located near this point, so additional stopping points are available.

After leaving Chesapeake Beach, we followed the coast through the town of Fairhaven and to our lunch stop in Galesville. We had lunch in Big Mary's Dock Bar at the Pirates Cove Marina.

Mattigan had surveyed the route beforehand, so we had no trouble finding our way. We all had a great ride, and I look forward to seeing everyone at our next casual ride. Be safe!

Here is a link to the Garmin Map File.