Ohio's Tail of the Dragon, Route 536

Today was our 3rd Annual Sunrise Ride with our friends you are coming to know - Tiny and Goldilocks, Hammer, Bones, and Booner and Sweet-n-Low. You may recall that back in January, Bryon and I took a winter drive down Ohio Route 7 and checked out this dragon, and it was totally cool, cold even back six months ago. :)


I chose the Ohio Dragon for our Sunrise Ride, and by the way, if you have not done this, it's fun! We get up ridiculously early, 3am or so, and meet for breakfast at a 24 hour joint and try to hit the road at 4:30am. That worked in year one, not so much in year two, and this morning we didn't hit the road until about 5 or so, and the eastern clouds were already showing that cotton candy blue and pink. But that's okay.




We met at McDonald's in Hubbard. Did you know you can order bacon and eggs? True story.

Anyway, it was so freaking cold when we started riding through Hubbard on Route 7, but we're tough, and we followed 7 until we hit I-680 off of Albert Street. We followed that lovely piece of road to 224 and took that west to Route 7 South.

Route 7 is a nice road for quite a ways after you get south of Boardman. We stayed on 7 the entire way down to Hannibal, Ohio, stopping when necessary, like here. It was about 7:00am or so when we rolled all loud into this sleeping small town. I'm sure they were impressed, especially when we were so cold and I suggested a group hug to get warm. The guys thought us gals should go ahead and hug so our boobs would touch. Typical! Anyway, no hugging happened, and we took off after warming up by the engines.




Our next quick stop was a rest area 2 miles down 7 (if only we'd known), and then two town down aways we found a gas station. We stayed there for a half hour bullshitting and eating snacks. The guy working there was a biker too, and had a cool bike parked outside the building.

Onward we went, until Bryon saw a mom and pop restaurant on the right, Van Dyne's in Shadyside, so we made a right onto the road just past it and took the service road back to it. If you're in the mood for good food (biscuits and gravy sound good?), take a stop here. Oh, and they have a burger challenge, something like a 2 pound cheeseburger and fries in 30 minutes or less? Look it up here: Van Dyne's Restaurant.

It was only about another 20 miles to Ohio's Tail of the Dragon. You'll know you're close when:

1) you pass Ohio Route 78 on the right

2) you then pass a green sign that says Hannibal

3) you see the sign for 536 with the turning arrow

Turn right. You'll wind up a hill a ways by some houses, just follow through. Then you'll make a sharp left turn, up a hill, and a sharp right at the top and then have fun! It winds and turns and makes you think. Don't look too long down the drop offs or up the steep driveways that make you think "who the fuck would live up here?". Goldilocks counted the curves: 108. Ohio's Dragon ends at Ohio Route 78. You can go left to head west and choose other nice roads to ride, or turn right to go east and meet up with Route 7 again. 

Matter of fact, starting tomorrow, July 9th, they will be doing some much needed construction on some sharp bends that overlook deep slopes on Ohio's Dragon. In several places the road had collapsed and was restricted, and there were temporary traffic lights I think three times where there was only one lane. This kept us from going straight through, but it is supposed to be done in about 30 days. We recommend waiting until then to go do it.

On the way home, we rode back on Ohio Route 45 to Lisbon, and stopped for food at the Steel Trolley Diner for another bite to eat. I had the oatmeal pie, which was very good, and next time it will be one of their specialty hot dogs.

With that, it's 7:38pm, and I'm off to take a nap. That 3am alarm clock was a doozy, but it was worth every minute today to get up and do something different and make more amazing memories with the best of friends.

~ Holly, a.k.a., Stitchblade