Today's route took us across the Shenandoah Valley and up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The first ten miles out of Lexington were uneventful and relatively easy riding, but then we found there were discrepancies between what the map and cue sheet were telling us we should be seeing, and what we were seeing. Which is to say, we were lost. A helpful woman stopped at a crossroads where we were scratching our heads and directed us in the right direction to rejoin the intended route.
The elevation profile led us to expect that from the town of Vesuvius the road up to the Blue Ridge would climb 1500' in four miles. It was to be the last major climb of the whole trip. We have faced many difficult climbs with foreboding, only to find that they really weren't so bad. The most recent example was crossing the first of the Appalachian Range into Virginia's Great Valley. That one we gave the name of Pussycat Pass. Well, today's should be called The Boy Who Cried Wolf, because it was even harder than we expected. The whole climb was at a grade of 11-15%. We stopped to catch our breath more and more frequently, even though it is hard to restart on such a steep grade. It finally got to the point where we could only go a few hundred feet; we gave up and walked, pushing the loaded tandem up the mountain. In summary, we rode the first mile, took breaks during the next mile, and walked the last two. It wasn't pretty, but we did get our bike, gear and carcasses up to the top. An alternative name for the climb would be come-along since we could have used one to hoist the bike up the mountain. One man we spoke with in Lexington yesterday rolled his eyes at the idea of riding a bike up from Vesuvius and said that during the Revolutionary War the Americans hauled cannons up that route and no one knows how they did it. We know how they must have felt. By the way, we have climbed the real Mt. Vesuvius, on foot, and it isn't that steep.
Once on the Blue Ridge Parkway we enjoyed that beautiful road for 11 miles. When they built that road in the 30's, they routed it around the peaks and kept the grade to about 10% or less. There are very few places for lodging or camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway or the Skyline Drive further north. The place we stopped for the night is just out of sight of the Parkway, and we would not have known about it except for a listing on our map. We have a comfortable and well equipped cabin, and there is a little country store here where we got lunch and supplies to fix our own dinner. All the other cabins are vacant tonight, probably because no one knows they are here. Would make a good marketing case study at a business school.
We have a weak wifi connection, and I don't dare try to upload any pictures.
We will sleep well tonight.
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