Day Three – Charlottesville to Lexington (up and over the Blue Ridge)

Ok. First of all, to all the Charlottesville weather forecasters who said “widely scattered showers with peeks of sunshine”… Bite me. It rained today. All day. Sometimes it was a sprinkle, sometimes it approached downpour status. Regardless of how you slice it, the radar showed a system the size of the entire state of Virginia rolling in. “Widely scattered” my butt.

Now that that’s out of my system… today was actually a very enjoyable ride. Even with the rain, the Blue Ridge Parkway is incredibly scenic. The morning started out in downtown C-ville. Heidi and the kids were going to hit some historic outpost in Stauton but the weather changed their plans. So we all rolled out of town a bit after 9.  Before we rolled out, Heidi got creative with the camera. The disc brakes look lovely in the morning light.

JP and I proceeded to get lost in the first 2 miles. We had been following VA Bike Rt 76 for most of the trip, but just outside of town it diverged from the ACA TA route. After a 2 mile detour, we were back on track.

Heidi and the kids went ahead to setup lunch. After a quick stop at the Rockfish Gap Visitors center and a refuel, they sat in the MCC in the rain and waited.. and waited.. and waited… Heidi continued to play with the camera. Note: in an RV, all exits have to be labeled as “exits” since it’s technically a house. This is the exit sign on our back door.

The hills started hitting fast and furious about 20 miles in. The second major climb took us right to the entrance of the park where Heidi, Art, and the kids were waiting. Art had to go down the hill and snag JP as the top of that climb was pretty brutal with a bunch of the dreaded right hand switchbacks (the inside of the right lane is the steepest on those). Here’s me cruising in for lunch.

Once in the park it was foggy. Like seriously. I put on all the lights I had so I could be seen. To add extra excitement, the wind was really hammering on the peaks. The climbs in the park weren’t steep, but they were definitely _long_.

At times the fog broke and we had some pretty amazing views.

 

About 18 miles into the park, I ran out of water. I got a text from Heidi asking where I was. Checking the GPS, my next “turn” was 4 miles ahead. I assumed that was my exit from the park and I’d be able to get water then so I texted her I’d be making the turn in 4 miles.

WRONG! I had another 10 miles to go, and most was uphill. Once I realized my mistake, I tried to text Heidi to get her to come meet me with water. No cell service. Tried to resend the message. No joy. This went on for an hour while I continued to climb. Seriously, I was spent and got hyper focused on getting liquid in me. I finally got in touch with Heidi and she turned around to meet me. We literally met at the top of the very last climb before leaving the park. I spent about 20 mins in the MCC getting my feet back under me. Good times.

JP and I had split up after lunch. He started out about where he left off and began his climb in to the park. He made it most of the way through the park and put on over 5k of climbing for the day. Definitely his largest day climbing ever and a hell of a job working through the forest.

The last 25 miles is basically all down hill, including a 3 mile serious descent in to Vesuvius. I had to stop twice because I was afraid my brakes were overheating. When the rain hit the discs, steam shot off the rotors. Yeah, they were warm.

Anyhoo, that’s the day. 2 more days until our rest day. I can’t wait. 🙂