Day 11: Asheville, NC to Christiansburg, VA
Thu 20 Jun 2024
Miles ridden today: 261
Miles since home: 3083
Touring around today: Blue Ridge Parkway north to Mt Mitchell, then along into Blowing Rock, and then avoiding I-81 in the afternoon to a hotel for the night.
Jeff gets up at 5am to get ready for his deliveries ... and that's when I get up too, so yay, we said goodbyes and he gave me expired cookies and I packed the bike and headed early onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I've been a bit hesitant about taking it, truth be told: with a speed limit of 45mph and 'many overlooks' and lots of trees, would it really be that scenic and uncrowded. Well, yeah. That section heading northeast of Asheville just kept climbing and climbing into the mountains, alongside cliffs, following ridge lines through the mists, it felt a bit like other 'scenic highways' (ahem, the North Cascades Highway) but not one I'd expect east of the Mississippi. It was refreshingly cool, almost too cool, and best of all: NO TRAFFIC at 8am, except some go-getter bicyclists.
I turned off after a bit and went up Mt Mitchell and felt cold for the last little walk to the top--so cold I put on my wool longsleeve shirt for the first time, it was a bit breezy but only 50F and yeah, I was cold. The mountain itself is covered in an odd type of fir and definitely feels more New England than North Carolina. I enjoyed just looking around, and then got back on the Parkway north towards Boone, tootling along at just about 45mph. I found I really couldn't go much faster without hitting a pothole now and then, and it just felt rushed... the swaying of the curves was very calming, so much so I felt like I was drifting off. Probably didn't help that I was listening to Air's Moon Safari which is dreamy enough as it is.
That dreamy state lasted maybe 30 minutes, of course, until Other People. Today's car model to hate on is the Honda CR-Vs. Why so many, and why so many going 25mph except when you want to pass them on one of the very rare passing spots? By the time I got to Blowing Rock for lunch, it wasn't even much worth passing them... 30 seconds of blissful no-one-in-front, and then some one pulling into traffic from an overlook at a pace not much faster than I can ride a tricycle. And That last bit around Linn Cove Viaduct was not a joyful ride either--a couple of cars had stopped on the bridge and people hopped out to take pictures. It's a concrete bridge folks--no one is going to look at your pictures and think you're amazing for being on that particularly unscenic chunk of gray concrete.
Blowing Rock looked cute as a town but was cramped and confusing, with construction of something in a trench down the middle of the main drag, and every parking space was at an odd incline, so nope sorry no lunch there, going into Boone and finding a sandwich and seeing what my Garmin was suddenly nagging me about with slow traffic and delays ahead on the Parkway past Boone. Erm uh, what is it? A weird GPS glitch? Nope! I had the bright idea to check the NPS website for the parkway and yep: a construction detour, a long one, 25 miles or more. Whelp, guess I'll make my way to wherever I pillow I plop my head onto tonight without the Full Parkway Experience... not that I was eager to travel the still-200-plus miles to Roanoke at 30mph behind a gaggle of CR-Vs.
Anyways, after Boone it was a pleasant ride on US221 to VA 8 with some really good motorcycling sections (like into Floyd) with a Food Lion stop in Galax for fluids, and boom after 2.2 miles on I-81 I was at the hotel.
A good touring day--interesting sites, cool to warm with no rain, and despite my whinging here, there was not really any traffic at all except for the hour before Blowing Rock. That's a better journey by far than a couple hundred miles on I-81, the unappealing alternative.