Day 92

Rockslide
Maybe it was the squirrels or just the time of year where stuff flies off the trees, but it seriously sounded like a rockslide at times. A squirrel found where I was and decided I needed to get up. He chattered at me urgenty. Fine... I packed up and down the hill I went. More hills. More gorgeous streams and trees. I stopped at a gas station. They didn't really have what I wanted, so I just got icecream. It was still early and it really wasn't that hot, but I wanted my icecream. Soon I was on my way again and into Virginia. The road seemed to get more curvy, hilly and less wide. Despite this, I still got passed by a few semis. Those are some brave souls. I passed by lots of houses before I finally made it to my first town. I checked the gas station, the pharmacy, a truck stop. No postcards. The truck stop had souvineers, but not what I needed. On to Big Stone Gap. It was a four lane. The shoulders were okay for a bit, but then as usual, they disappeared. I rode alongside the road for a while but eventually it was just thick grass and that became impossible. I had to walk my bike. For a long time. It sucked. Finally the side of the road got better again and I could pick up the pace. I stopped by a gas station to check for postcards and to get food when a man named Jack offered me a bottle of water. He's been trying to get more bikers through Virginia. The state relies heavily on the coal industry, but that is dying out. He pointed me to a campground in Big Stone Gap. He made a call and knew they had postcards. He said it was legal to ride on this road. When I left, I tried it out for a bit, but it really didn't feel safe. When I'm on a normal two lane highway, it's pretty easy for people to just pass me. But when it's only two lanes one way, there could be two cars riding side by side, in which case there is no way for the car closest to me to get over. Luckily it wasn't long before I had a turn off. I made my way into Big Stone Gap. Jack had given me directions, Google was giving me different directions, and I took a different route altogether. I found an actual bike path that led right to the rv park. The owner was mowing. He saw me arrive and came over. I only had about an hour left of riding, so I decided to quit early to get my stuff charged up a bit more and use the wifi here. It was 12 bucks, which sucks, but it's the first time I've paid to camp in a loooong time. So not too big of a deal. Plus he offered me spaghetti. I set up my tent in full light, which was super weird, then headed up to the pavilion to eat. I chatted with the host for a while. There was a movie filmed here last year. I'll definitely have to watch it. When I was done eating, I grabbed my charger and headed back to the pavilion. It's a pretty long walk. On the way, an older man stopped me and told me about a guy who at age 65 was old by his doctor that he didn't have long left to live. He decided he wanted to spend the rest of his days biking. Every day, he would do an 85 mile treck, up and down a mountain. He's now 87. His total number of miles is nearly 200,000 now. I can't even imagine. Once I got back to the pavilion, I realized that I forgot to bring two wall plug ins... Drats. I just plugged in my big battery and used the wifi to upload my pictures to Dropbox- it had been a while, so I had over 160. I wrote in my blog and checked out where I needed to go tomorrow until it got dark. Once I had finally uploaded everything, I headed back down to my tent and called home. It was nice to talk to my parents again- it had been a while. Finally I went to sleep around 11.