Fall 2011
Denis Kertz, ©2011
I went downstairs for the breakfast buffet and was surprised to find the place packed at about 6:45. I had to grab a chair from the Internet PC station in the same room for a place to sit. I discovered there was no hostess or waitress and eventually figured out that breakfast was included in the stay. I loaded up on just about everything.
When I left shortly
after 8am I was able to ride right onto the
The canal path varied in consistency with crushed gravel and hard packed dirt and occasional pot holes with water. Most of the time the pot holes were easy to dodge but some of them extended pretty much across the width of the path.
Early on I saw some
walkers out for early morning exercise near
Once I was back on
the C&O I had to decide where to camp as it was getting late. The first hiker-biker site wasn't that
appealing and I still had riding time left.
It was almost 6pm when I decided to ride to the next hiker-biker,
another 9 miles. I boosted my pace at
that point and got to
For most of the day
the path followed along side the canal which didn't always have water and
sometimes the water was covered with algae.
Other times there were views of the
I saw a number of deer, mostly towards the evening. When I returned to the C&O from the state park I saw a herd of 5 or 6 run across the road in front of me. I also saw a tree that was almost completely cut down from beaver activity.
The only access to food for the day was at Hancock where I stopped for a cold drink. After being on the path all day it was strange to suddenly encounter noisy traffic. When I left Hancock on the WMRT the path closely paralleled a freeway for several miles and the traffic noise was rather annoying.
The weather
forecast predicted showers over night and they came but not until almost
5am. I was worried that the showers
wouldn't stop but they finally did a little after 7am. I waited until then, noticed there was
another cyclist in camp who was finishing packing, and packed up another wet
tent and then rode just a couple miles to
The interesting
part of the local conversation were the picks in the local football pool. One guy picked
It was almost 9 by the time I left. The day represented some of the worst part of riding the C&O. Since it had rained, the normal puddles were even wetter and muddier so it was a constant dodge effort. Then the gravel just messed up the bike. Fortunately I had fenders or I would have been equally messy. There was one section of the trail that was closed off for restoration so there was a 6 mile detour on the roads to get around the closed trail. This did take me by a small store so I stopped for milk and my second breakfast. Then I noticed that I couldn't be headed in the right direction despite the clear detour signs. So I reversed directions and got on track, maybe wasting a couple of miles.
The day turned out
longer than I expected. I thought I
would make
On the other side I
played tourist for a bit.
So I rode further
on and High Street turned into
The hostel cost almost $30 for a spot in a room with 5 bunk beds with one guy already there. I was able to hose off my bike and set up my tent to let it dry out. I also used the dryer to dry my day's clothes after rinsing them out in the shower. Then I walked a couple blocks to a pizza place for dinner.
When I got back to
the hostel there was a young couple signed up.
Turns out that Harpers Ferry is on the Appalachian Trail and this couple
and a guy from the
Finally, I called it a night. I had thought of the day as a partial rest day with only about 40 miles of riding but it seemed much harder and not much of a rest.
Breakfast was
included in the hostel rate and we had agreed that 7am would be a good time for
the five of us. So around 7am our
hostess started churning out waffles until we said no mas. There was also some bananas and cantaloupe as
well as coffee so it was a reasonable breakfast. Since we all sat around the table upstairs it
was a good time for the 5 of us to chat and learn a little more about each
other. The Appalachian Trail hikers were
heading south about 20 hiking miles and the other woman was riding back to the
DC area on the
Our young hiking
couple made plans yesterday to fly home on November 17 so they now had a hard
deadline to complete their AT trip. Then
they planned to spend a year or two in
My bike was locked away in a shed attached to the rear of the house so I retrieved it after our hostess unlocked the shed. I packed up the stuff I had carried upstairs to the dorm room yesterday and then I was off around 8am. The Teahorse Hostel turned out to be a good place to stay. It was very clean and nice inside, looking much better than the outside exterior suggested and the hostess was very gracious.
I didn't have a
great route south to Front Royal. I had
tried using Google Maps to set up a bicycle route but it gave a route with a
lot of turns so I ignored it. The easiest
route was simply to ride south on
Initially 340 was a 4-lane freeway type road with a wide shoulder so it was fine for cycling, just noisy. I rode all the way to Charles Town on what I thought was 340 only to follow a sign in Charles Town directing me to follow to get to 340. So I dutifully followed it thinking it was just a little jog through town and then became uncomfortable when I kept riding and it was obvious I was not on 340. Worse, I couldn't get any info from my GPS to see what road I was on but I knew I was at least heading south so I couldn't get too lost. Eventually the road junctioned with 340 and I picked up 340 again. So the route turned out fine by putting me on a country road for a while.
However, I was still
plagues by the inability to get any info from my GPS. I began to worry that somehow the subset of
maps I had selected to download to my Garmin 60CSx had gotten garbled. So at that point I was pretty well stuck with
340 knowing that would get me to my destination. Then after 15 miles I left
I rode with more
confidence after entering
When I got to the junction with SR255 I had to make a decision. I could see that 255 didn't have a shoulder and was a fairly narrow road so I decided to stick with 340. That decision lasted about another 100 yards when the 340 shoulder basically disappeared. At that point I turned around and decided to take my chances on 255.
This turned out to be a really good choice. Although 255 was narrow there was little traffic and it took me through the quiet country side. There were farms, some horse ranches, and generally fairly scenic areas that I wouldn't have gotten on 340. In fact, when I turned on to 255 it was labeled with a Virginia Byway scenic sign.
There was a fair amount of roller coasting on this route and 255. Somewhere south of Millwood 255 turned into 624 and the roller coaster continued. Then I started noticing that the bike didn't seem to handle quite right and I soon noticed my rear tire going flat, the first flat of the trip. I pulled over, found the puncture in the tube and patched it, and found a little piece of wire still stuck in the tire that caused the puncture.
A little while
later 624 also became known as
After a short
refreshment break in town I rode south on the main drag to
The Budget Motel was
at the north end of town so I had to backtrack a little ways. Then I learned the $43 was $49 and got it
talked down to $47 with an AARP discount.
I walked to a Subway for dinner and then settled in for the night boning
up on the riding ahead on the
I ate at a nearby breakfast place that would have been okay except I confused the menu prices. The men listed 3 pancakes for $3.75 and, I thought, with ham $4.95 whereas these were 2 totally separate items. So it was an expensive breakfast.
On my way out of
town I stopped at a grocery store for a few last minute items and then it was
just a short distance to the turn off to
The one problem is
that the first campground was only 22 miles and the next one was 50 some miles
– one too close and the other too far.
Naturally I chose the one too far, knowing full well that I would be
riding all day given how long the climbs would take at 3-4 mph. I did get a couple breaks, the first at the
There was some wild life viewing. One time I missed a mama bear and her cub that others had stopped to check out. Later I saw a bear wandering off into the woods. Then later I saw a mama bear followed by a cub cross the road in front of me, and then more cubs followed. There must have been 4 cubs but none of them had the presence of mind to pose for a photo. Late in the day deer seemed to be everywhere. Most particularly they were around the Big Meadows area and they seemed to barely pay attention to the humans gawking at them.
The weather turned out pretty good. Early it was fairly sunny and then clouded up later. It looked like it could rain but never did but the clouds dipped into the mountains. Interestingly, the clouds seemed to gather on the east side of the ridge and not on the west side, as if the ridge provided a boundary between two weather systems.
I was dragging pretty well by the end of the day with over a mile of climbing. The campground was fine but in my state almost any campground would have been okay. I got a site for $10 with my pass and it also had a bear locker so I didn't have to worry about hanging food. Showers cost $1 which was very reasonable and I was really glad to have a shower after the hard day.
A tough day with all the climbing but a good cycling day with some great scenery.
There were a few drops of rain in the morning so I hurried to get the tent packed up before it could get wet, with a couple deer passing by as I was packing. I rode to the nearby lodge for breakfast and had 3 very good buckwheat pancakes.
By this time it was drizzling a little so when I noticed folks using laptops in the lounge I deduced there was WiFi and I got my netbook out to check the weather. It was not encouraging. The weather radar was showing a big glob of green with some thunderstorms. So I decided it was not a good day for riding. I also didn't want to spend the day in a tent so I got a room at the lodge for $125, the cheapest rate.
I couldn't check in right away so I hung around in the lounge and finally got checked in at 1:30pm. My room was on the terrace so I would have had a great view if it hadn't been for the clouds.
I spent some time
studying my route using the guide, Bicycling the
The rain finally moved out of the area by late afternoon. It would have been a pretty miserable day to be riding.
There was a guy singing folk songs in the tap room that I thought might be interesting but he spent most of his time giving background information and then trying to get the audience involved in singing choruses to his songs that I didn't find the entertainment very entertaining and stayed for only one beer.
I didn't wake up until 6:45 and was surprised I slept that well since I hadn't done anything yesterday and had taken a couple of short naps. I packed up and had the same breakfast of 3 buckwheat pancakes as yesterday and they were as good as yesterday.
All last night and
during breakfast I agonized about today's route. The problem was the only realistic camping
was 30 miles down the road, shorter than I wanted to go. The ideal route was to the end of the
When rolling my
bike out of my room onto the terrace another guy approached me. Turns out he was cycling the
I picked up a few
items on my way back to the
After 10 miles I
passed the 1,000 mile marker for this trip.
Despite the fog this was still a good cycling day, much better than
yesterday would have been. Around 12:30
I stopped at
When I called the
motel in the morning I had given 4pm as my arrival time and I hit that almost
on the button. The motel was closer to
the exit at the end of
Like many motels
these days, the Colony Motel was run by an Indian family. The lady who registered me said she would
take me into town for food for $5. This
was a good deal.
So after cleaning up I took my taxi into town to an all-you-can-eat buffet where I got my fill. I also picked up some milk for breakfast in the morning and called for my taxi to come get me and return me to the motel where I settled in for the night.
So far on this trip
I had met two other touring cyclists and, Mark Boyd, a third touring cyclists
had invited me to stay with him and his wife when I reached
I had picked up
milk on my excursion into
340 wasn't the greatest road to be riding, a 4-lane divided highway with virtually no shoulder but I only needed it for 11 miles to catch 11 south. There was also relatively little traffic so traffic was good about easing over into the next lane when passing me.
11 was a better road, a 3-lane road initially with the middle lane a turn lane and then later used as a passing lane for whichever direction was climbing. I looked for a breakfast place in Stuarts Draft although I didn't really need a second breakfast yet. Instead I found a grocery store and picked up a few things. Later 11 turned into a 4-lane divided highway but it paralleled I-81 so it didn't have a lot of traffic and it was fine for riding.
For at least a few days I was hearing an annoying rattling sound that seemed to be coming from my front wheel/panniers. It would start around 17mph and get louder. I had no idea what was causing it. Today I noticed that the rattling was less consistent and seemed to have diminished, which I took as a good sign.
Riding got messy as
I neared
Around 12:30 there
was some clearing in the sky and I could see parts of the
I continued south in my quest for Buchanan. Just south of Natural Bridge 11 merged with I-81 and I stopped at a food mart for a drink and a little info from the lady running the register. She didn't know of any camping around Buchanan but wondered if I could camp in the town park. She also mentioned the motel I knew about just outside town.
There was a frontage road that took me to Buchanan. It was a nice road and the best riding of the day except for the noise from the nearby Interstate. A couple miles before Buchanan I found the motel on the hill so I rode up to check on the rate and it was $60+tax. I was actually kind of hoping it would be too expensive and give me the excuse to see about camping in Buchanan.
So I rode downhill into Buchanan and saw the town park as I rode into the main part of town. As I cased the town park I rode by a restaurant that had some outside entertainment. Then I rode up main street to see if there was a police station where I could ask about camping but found nothing. So I rode back to the restaurant and inquired about camping in the park and they didn't know of any restriction.
So I decided to eat at the restaurant outside and take advantage of the entertainment, a guy playing guitar and singing and accompanied by a woman singer singing mostly country songs. I figured this was about as good as it gets and then the woman who was the owner took my order and said I could camp in their yard after the entertainment was done at 7pm. So I settled in for some beer, good BBQ, and good entertainment, thinking how much better this turned out than staying at the motel on the hill.
When the entertainment group had finished and removed their equipment I started setting up my tent under a canopy which would protect my tent from rain. While setting up the guitar singer introduced himself and asked about my touring. He had a bicycle and did some riding and had also hiked the AT. Bicycle touring was out of the question for the time being with a young son but was something he hoped to do in the future.
So it turned out to be a great ending to an unexpected route for the day.
I planned to have breakfast at a pharmacy that also had a grill but supposedly didn't open until 8:00 so I took my time packing up. When I stopped at the pharmacy there was no sign of life and the schedule said closed on Monday. So I rode across the street to the service station with a Burger King and had what they called breakfast.
I was right at the
junction with 43 that would take me up to the
It was a 4 mile climb of 1200 feet to the top and steep. I climbed at mostly 3mph to the top with just occasional traffic. I was delighted to find the annoying rattle from the last several days had disappeared but a clicking sound had replaced it. The clicking seemed to be coming from the bottom bracket and only happened under heavy load, which means I had to listen to it all the way up the climb.
When I got to the Parkway there was fog. I rode a little further until I found a suitable place for my well earned second breakfast but first I had to remove my jersey which was drenched with sweat from the climb.
There was some more climbing but nothing significant compared to the climb up to the Parkway. The fog varied and there were times where the clouds thinned out enough to give a view of below. Some of these views were probably more interesting than the normal view because of the play of light where the clouds consented to let some light through.
Then I started a long descent that gave back much of the hard earned altitude. The heavily wooded areas gave way to some residential and farming areas.
Today's route was a
fairly short route since the next campground after
When I got back on
the Parkway I rode a little further and took the turnoff to a
With the occasional rain I ate in my tent and then hung up my food for the night.
Around 10:30 it rained along with lightning but this didn't last too long. However, it rained again at 4:30 and then again at 6:00. I was worried I would be packing up in rain but the rain moved on and my tent wasn't too terribly wet when I packed up.
There was just a little fog in the morning and that cleared up and it looked like it was going to be a nice day. After some easy miles I had a 6-mile climb. Near the top clouds moved in and it became very foggy, the worst of the trip. Then after about an hour or so the fog just mysteriously disappeared. It was as if someone had turned on a light switch and I could see again.
One of the highlights of the day was meeting someone on the road who was slower than me – a turtle trying to cross the road. I hung around to make sure he made it successfully and he did although one car passed while I was protecting him so I might have saved a life.
Once the fog left it became a sunny day with clouds and fairly scenic. There were some open areas with farms right up against the Parkway. This was some nice diversity.
Then the big problem. My guide book suggested that Adney Gap was a good place to stock up on supplies or have lunch or dinner. Since I was making good time I figured it would be a good idea to stock up but when I took the exit and came to 221 there was nothing in sight. My guide book made it sound like you could go left or right and find success. I should have reconsidered when nothing looked promising but I went left because an old sign pointed towards a grocery store in 3 miles. Big mistake. I went at least 4 miles with nothing even hinting of food. Finally, I cut my loss and turned around and just got back on the Parkway, having wasted a lot of miles and energy.
This put a bummer on the day. Riding was hard enough without wasting energy and all I could think for the rest of the afternoon was where I would have been now if not for the wasted miles. Fortunately, there were some good views that finally got me out of my funk. Most memorable was looking east at Devils Backbone Overlook. Then later some nice views of pastoral settings near the road.
I did meet a motor cyclist at one of the turnouts who said yesterday he rode 175 miles through rain and fog and saw nothing. So maybe I was lucky to only have had rain at night while I was comfortable in my tent.
My destination for the day was Rocky Knob CG but my guide book advised there was a motel just off the Parkway a mile and a half before the CG so I took the exit and carefully looked around. This time the guide book was spot on and the motel/restaurant was only a couple hundred yards away. However, I was worried when I approached and saw a For Sale sign for the motel but the motel was still open for business. The restaurant was part of the deal and I inquired about price at the restaurant and was told $53. I was told there was no AARP discount but the owner eventually offered a $10 discount since I was planning to eat dinner there and maybe breakfast. I had a pretty decent and filling lasagna dinner.
Then I retired to
my room and hung up my tent outside to dry.
The motel/restaurant had WiFi but it wasn't accessible from my room so I
went back to the restaurant to plan my next couple days. The biggest issue with riding the Parkway is
finding accommodations and food/drink.
The National Park Service has a series of campgrounds right on the
parkway. Unfortunately, the next one,
There was some good and bad news regarding the bike. At first both the rattling and clicking sounds disappeared but then the clicking noise returned later in the day.
The restaurant at the motel didn't open for breakfast until 8am so I took the opportunity to clean my chain. I doubted it had anything to do with the clicking noise but it was about time to clean the chain anyway.
I had a good breakfast – 2 large pancakes and a slice of ham. The choice of staying at this motel/restaurant turned out to be a good one. I left a little before 9 and rode back a short way and got back on the Parkway.
It was a cool
morning but there was no fog and it promised to be a good weather day. The next major campground,
Nine miles down the road I stopped at Mabry Mill, a one time mill and now a restaurant which was reputed to have great buckwheat pancakes. So after the only significant climbing for the day I stopped for my second breakfast figuring this would be a highlight – two pancake breakfasts in the same day. Unfortunately, as often happens, the hype did not match reality. I found the buckwheat pancakes to be at best okay but nothing I would recommend. My earlier breakfast was better in every respect – better pancakes, bigger pancakes, less expensive. The first two pancakes I had for breakfast were at least as large in total as the 3 buckwheat pancakes.
Fortunately, this
disappointment didn't extend to the rest of the day. Scenery was very nice with some open spaces
and some riding through the trees. There were a couple of awesome views of hills
to the east. I stopped at
Later as I was
zooming down a fair hill I was surprised to find a food mart along the
road. Almost nothing will get me to stop
while zooming down the road but food will.
So I braked and pulled in and found the cyclist I saw earlier. It turned out he was touring the Parkway but
he only had a Kestrel racing bike for the job.
Not wanting to make a substantial investment in a touring bike and
equipment he carried everything in a moderate backpack. He had started just yesterday from
It was only a few more miles to Fancy Gap where I stopped to pick up a few things in the food mart and then had a simple sandwich/fries meal at the next door restaurant.
There was a KOA campground just down the road where I got a tent site for $24. Not the cheapest camping but it did have WiFi and included showers. I actually had WiFi access from my tent site but then the skies kept unleashing a few sprinkles and I finally moved to the laundry room.
It was a good cycling day and amazing to feel like this was almost a rest day, marred only by the disappointing pancakes at Mabry Mill.
It was nice to have WiFi in my tent. I checked email and the weather before packing up and riding back into town for breakfast. After yesterday's disappointing buckwheat pancakes I went for regular pancakes and bacon this morning and was not disappointed.
It was a cool morning but good weather. There was an initial steep climb but after that it was rolling with an overall descent. The road went through farmland and forests and flipping back and forth made for interesting scenery. This was really good cycling with good weather and good scenery. I also saw some wild turkey and several deer.
I thought I might
make a quick stop at the
Shortly after, I
entered
I rode another 10
miles just enjoying the day and thinking it couldn't get any better. But it could get worse, lots worse. Suddenly I saw signs warning of a detour off
the Parkway ahead. My initial thought
was to ignore the detour and find a way to finagle my way through whatever
construction was taking place. But then
there was a sign explicitly warning cyclists they couldn't get through (a
cyclist can often get through places where vehicles can't) and then I met a
ranger coming the other way. He made it
clear that I had no option so I reluctantly took the 21 exit to
What a disaster the
detour was. No one in their right mind
would force a cyclist to ride to
At least this
detour route offered some services. I
stopped at a food mart before
I was afraid 18 was going to involve a lot of climbing to get back to the Parkway but it was mostly rolling with only a few moderately difficult climbs. Without any traffic it would have been a fine road to cycle. But it contained large truck traffic and had no shoulder. So I had to continually watch for traffic and had to get off the road to let a school bus and the traffic behind it get by.
I eventually ran
into some road construction that had a single lane and a pilot vehicle. I think this was the source of all the truck
traffic because I didn't see any after this area but I was almost to
I stopped at
another food mart thinking I had a ways to go yet but the attendant said I was
in
I stopped at the first motel thinking I might be able to do a deal with a motel room and eating at the restaurant but when I was told a room was $75 I knew a deal was out of the question. I rode over to the other restaurant with the intention of having a meal and then riding up the Parkway a mile to Miller's Campground. However, there was no one in the restaurant. Turns out the waitress was in the outside patio area gabbing with some guy. She came in and offered me a menu and got me a drink and then nothing. I eventually decided this place wasn't going to get my business and I paid the waitress for the drink just as she finally decided to take my food order and rode over to the other restaurant.
I got much better service there and they had WiFi that I could get from outside.
After eating I rode up the Parkway less than a mile to the campground where I got a tent site for $19 but had to pay cash. This place was mostly an RV campground but they had 4 or 5 tent sites where I settled in for the night, finding WiFi access in the laundry room.
A great day until
about 1:30pm when I was detoured on to a dangerous section of road. The direct route from the 21 exit to
I packed and rode
the mile back to
I hit the road a little before 9:00. It was a cool, cloudy day. There was a lot of climbing for the day and the day started with a good climb and I had the Parkway virtually to myself for a good part of the morning. The scenic highlight of the day was the view of the Piedmonts to the east. There were a number of these panoramic views.
Around noon the
clouds cleared up and the sun put in its appearance. In the early afternoon I met Ben, a touring
cyclist from west of
As the afternoon wore on the wind picked up and became gusty. Most of the time it didn't matter too much because the hills and trees blocked the wind but in an open area one needed to have a good grip on the bike. I had thought about stopping in Blowing Rock for food and groceries but it was getting late so I headed straight for the Julian Price CG.
It was a little after 5pm when I wandered through the CG to pick out a site near the lake. When I went back to the registration desk to announce my choice and pay Ben was just pulling into the CG. I figured Ben would end up here but wasn't sure when. We ended up sharing a site which I got for $8 with my pass so it cost us $4 each to camp, a great bargain.
The wind was howling all night while we were in the CG. It was a good thing the lake area was sitting in a low area and there were lots of trees to block the wind.
Turns out Ben had
had some problems with broken spokes and had been lucky to find a couple places
to stop to have that taken care of. One
place was in
I also had what turned out to be a relatively minor bicycle problem. I noticed early on that my cyclocomputer stopped on a couple of fast descents. That suggested to me that I had a weak battery and installing a new battery took care of the problem.
It was a windy evening and night. The wind was howling but our tent site was sitting low enough and surrounded by brush that it didn't bother us. But it did rain during the night and then stopped. Unfortunately, it started raining again around 7:00, just when we were getting ready to pack up. So we waited it out and packed up when the rain stopped.
It was a chilly morning so I put on my seal skinz socks, the first socks of the trip, along with a lightweight sweatshirt and windbreaker. It was 8:30 or so when we headed out, starting with a steep climb. Instead of raining it started snowing, which was good because the light snow was better than rain. I quickly traded my normal bicycle gloves for my two-fingered lobster claw gloves.
The riding wasn't fun with the weather and there were no views but it was tolerable riding. This lasted most of the morning. Both Ben and I were looking for some food so we stopped at the first opportunity, at Pineola, where an exit off the Parkway brought us to a store with a deli. There we ran into a touring couple that Ben had met yesterday. They had stayed at the same campground but weren't quite prepared for the cold weather. They bought socks and gloves at the store and were planning on staying in a motel at Little Switzerland.
There was little in the way of groceries but the deli was good. I had a chicken sandwich and a cup of chili that was particularly good under the conditions. It was also a good time to visit with the touring couple.
The sky cleared up in the afternoon and there were a number of good views that seemed unlikely given the morning conditions. But it was still a lot of climbing, more than the elevation profile seemed to suggest. There were also some screaming descents, the reward of all the climbing.
Ben and I pulled
into Crabtree Meadows around 4:30. We
stopped at a little store because I needed to get WiFi access and was lucky to
find it there. I was able to email Mark
Boyd and confirm that I was still on target to meet him tomorrow at
Somewhere during this time the wind started howling. We rode to the CG and picked out a site that was as low down as possible to provide the most shelter from the wind. Nevertheless the wind was howling and the tree tops were shaking. Ben was low on fuel for his stove so he made a fire that also provided some warmth. The real question was how cold it would be in the morning. The CG ranger said it was 37 last night and projected to get down to freezing tonight. That wouldn't be a problem in the tent but would make for a cold start in the morning.
The wind howled all
night. It eased up a bit in the early morning but not that much. So the question was how cold it was going to
be for riding. Ben had an Amtrak ticket
for Monday night in
I left camp around
8:15, dressed for cold weather. There
were 3 major climbs today before a long descent into
There were some great views along the way. On the west side there was a string of white clouds that clipped the top of the mountains. On the east side there were hills and mountains with the sun creeping over the mountains.
I made the first climb okay as hard as it was. As a reward I had my second cinnamon roll for the day, the first with my cereal breakfast in my tent. After a descent the second climb of another 1300 feet began. This climb was a little easier with more good views. The reward for this climb was my third cinnamon roll for the day.
After another
descent the last and shortest climb of 500 feet began. This climb brought me to the
After some photos
of the ice laden trees
I stopped at the
Mark didn't need a
break so he turned around and led me down the mountain to
Then Mark gave me
some ideas about routing for the rest of my trip. Originally I had planned to head east to the
I needed to do
various things on my rest day so I intended to find a breakfast place first and
then find a coffee shop with WiFi.
Unfortunately, I got my directions messed up and walked to
I spent several
hours writing email, paying bills, and researching a route to DC based on
Mark's suggestions. Most importantly I
found that the US Bike Route 1 which ran north-south looked like a good choice
to get me through
When I got back “home” I had an interesting conversation with Mark and Barbara, who wasn't feeling too well and had taken a sick day.
Later, Mark had a long standing dinner engagement on Monday evenings and Barbara wasn't interested in going out or cooking but she suggested a Chinese restaurant that turned out to be an easy walk and was a good choice for dinner.
After Mark returned from his dinner we had a fairly long discussion about his upcoming touring and general touring.
Copyright
Denis Kertz, 2011. All rights reserved.