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Thank you so much!
And thank you for posting the link to Monticello. It's a nice addition to this thread. I've been taking the on-line tour there. What a beautiful house!
I think I visted there when I was very young, too young to appreciate what I was seeing. Would have like to have toured it again on our recent trip to Virginia, but we ran out of time.
Another interesting house to tour. I remember going here on a class trip.
Mount Vernon Virtual Tour
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I rode only about 20 miles after crossing into Virginia on April 19, settling in for the night at the first hotel to offer itself up. I had hoped to get further, but decided it would be a good idea to build a little more strength before putting in hard miles. Also I figured I'd have all of flat Kansas to make up for early short days. (Over the following couple of weeks I came to rely a lot on Kansas.) I was in Virginia for 9 more days. I rode back roads southwest to Charlottesville, where I joined the Transamerica Trail. From Charlottesville I continued south-southwest down Virginia's mountainous spine, in and out of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoahs, down to a point near the southwestern tip of the state. On April 28th I arrived at Breaks Interstate Park on the Virginia/Kentucky border, and after a rest day there (my last off day until Jackson, Wyoming), I rode into Kentucky.
Virginia was lovely, with many scenic, lightly traveled roads, varied terrain, and plenty of historical sites. It's the only state on the Transamerica Trail still to maintain the Trail's route signs, so despite the winding roads and frequent route changes, navigation was pretty easy. But. Virginia had its bleak side too -- I rode through towns that hadn't prospered since the 1960s, and parts of southwestern Virginia foreshadowed the poverty that I would encounter a few days later in Appalachian Kentucky.
I didn't camp at all in Virginia; the weather was dreary and I hadn't quite achieved the Spartan mindset of the unsupported long-distance cyclist. Indeed I wound up in a couple of pretty plush bed & breakfasts, so that after only week I was way over budget. I guess I figured I'd make up for that in Kansas too, by sleeping in a thresher or something.
You can't settle into a bike tour until you have shed the automotive mentality -- until you've recalibrated your brain to bicycle scale. For instance, 65 or 85 miles is a good day for a cyclist but it isn't very far if you're used to driving. Similarly, rural residents travel 30 or 40 miles between towns without a second thought, but the cyclist prefers to believe that such distances separate two very different places.
These sorts of adjustments are elusive when you haven't got very far from home and are spending nights in places to which you routinely drive for dinner, and my route down to the southwest corner of Virginia -- as far west as Detroit! -- compounded the problem.
I was in the state for a long time, and even though after a few days I had started to make good distance, phone calls home took on a familiar and vaguely discouraging pattern: "I rode 65 miles today and passed Roanoke, but, um, I'm still in Virginia."
You can see Virginia from Washington, D.C.; though I'd been riding away from home for a week I wasn't sure I was getting anywhere!
The ride out of Charlottesville featured a segment on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a winding picturesque two lane road that runs 469 miles from Virginia to southern North Carolina, along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
During summer and fall this popular park is thick with cars, meaning that despite the (enforced) 45 mph speed limit, biking it requires attentiveness and care. But I was early and I saw perhaps 25 cars in 25 miles. I rode virtually alone, in dead delightful silence.
I've driven the entire Blue Ridge Parkway, going there many times when I lived in North Carolina, and up into Pennsylvania from there on my way to Rochester.
It is glorious in the summer and autumn --- loved to take neighborhood groups on picnics, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs and chilling watermelons in little streams beside the park's campsites - - assorted children (and adults!) wading in the stream, catching tiny minnows - - brief naps on blankets in the shade - frisbee contests on the grassy fields - etc.
Wonderful memories of another life - -
