Diary-Day 30-38

Day Thirty Eight Thurs 28 August Virginia Beach, VA (Cape Henry Lighthouse) Distance: 14.2 miles Total Distance: 3198.3 miles Yesterday while waiting for us, Dave and Joan befriended the Cape Henry lighthouse keeper, John Starling, so today, we all headed up to the lighthouse (this time without the RV!), and were welcomed with open arms by John, George (photographer) and some other visiting families. It was a well received welcome where Keith signed some autographs and posed for pictures, whilst enjoying the memories of the long journey Across America. Day Thirty Seven Wed 27 August Roduco - Virginia Beach, VA Distance: 98.2 miles Total Distance: 3184.0 miles Ride time: 6hrs 37 mins Including stops: 9hrs 06 mins Ave speed: 14.8mph Max speed: 26.0mph 83°F This morning we all got up at 6:30am and had breakfast in the RV in the parking lot of the hotel, before heading off on the last day of the cycle trip! Today we drove past the Great Dismal Swamp for most of the day and through some very small villages. We finally left the swamp area for housing estates leading into Virginia Beach and before we knew if we were at our last pit stop with just 15 miles left to the beach. Unfortunately just like all the best laid plans, we managed to all make a wrong turning and therefore add an extra 10 miles to the journey before finally getting to the beach and heading up the Fort Story military base, where Cape Henry Lighthouse stands. The RV made it to the base before Keith and was denied access! So we all went back down the beach to the bottom, where we met up with Keith’s parents who had flown in for the occasion. After 3183.9 miles and 33 days of cycling (37 days on the road), Keith finally was able to dip the bike and himself in the Atlantic Ocean. HE’S DONE IT !! ACROSS AMERICA BY BIKE!! Day Thirty Six Tues 26 August Henderson - Roduco, NC Distance: 101.7 miles Total Distance: 3085.9miles Ride time: 6hrs 45 mins Including stops: 8hrs 30 mins Ave speed: 15.0mph Max speed: 28.4mph 81°F This morning it was drizzling when we got up, but thankfully by the time we left it had virtually stopped. Weird day for cycling though as it was warm and humid, but a very cold wind. The wet weather has certainly brought out the mossies and they are biting us all like mad! The towns today very much merge into each other, and it seems that we are definitely into an urban area. There are no long straight deserted stretches here. We stopped for the day in Roduco, NC, where we thought that there was no accommodation, so we parked up outside the quaint little post office and waited for Keith to arrive whilst checking through various information sources for the nearest hotels and RV sites. A local man, who was collecting his days mail, stopped to ensure that we were OK, and so we started talking to him, to see whether there was any other accommodation around than in Ahoskie which was a 15 miles drive away. Unfortunately we were going to have to make the drive, however whilst speaking to him, we found out that we was actually originally from Staunton, VA – again, it is such a small world!! Once Keith had arrived and got changed, we headed to Ahsokie where we checked into the local hotel for the night. Day Thirty Five Mon 25 August Martinsville - Henderson, NC Distance: 102.9 miles Total Distance: 2984.1 miles Ride time: 6hrs 10 mins Including stops: 8hrs 45 mins Ave speed: 16.1mph Max speed: 36.0mph 83°F This morning whilst having breakfast we watched the deer, geese and ducks, and took a short walk along the river and around the car graveyard, which was a source of parts for the restoration of cars that was a project for the owner of the RV site. We drove about 2 miles up the road into the Historic Martinsville, and found Keith in the parking lot of the Virginia Natural History Museum, talking to two guys. It came to light that he had run over a large tack in the road and punctured his back inner tube. He had stopped to change the tube, only to find that the new inner tube also had a puncture in it. Unable to reach us on the walkie talkie, luckily a guy walking to his truck saw Keith and pulled out of his truck a brand new exact sized inner tube and changed the tube for him with no tools but his hands! He then went on his way and left Keith talking to the two security guys for the museum! Upon our arrival, Keith changed his drinks bottles and topped up with energy bars and went on his way! As we lingered in the parking lot sorting out some bits and pieces the security guard came back to us and invited us into the museum, by invitation of the director, even though it is actually shut on Mondays. Unfortunately due to time constraints we weren’t able to go in, but thought that it was an extremely kind gesture on their part. Around lunchtime today, we travelled into North Carolina and headed towards Oxford, where we found lots of tobacco growing, drying and being transported along the roads. We stopped in Henderson for the night, in a hotel, as quiet as the hotel in “The Shining” – needless to say we headed out for dinner and spent as little time there as possible!! Day Thirty Four Sun 24 August Galax - Martinsville, VA Distance: 74.7 miles Total Distance: 2881.2 miles Ride time: 5hrs 06 mins Including stops: 7hrs 18 mins Ave speed: 14.6mph Max speed: 50.1mph 85°F It is definitely turning into autumn today, as there is a chill in the air and dew on the cars. We watched 4 tiny kittens play, and listened to the town sirens calling for the fire engines, before leaving on the SR 58 towards Martinsville, our destination for the day. Once again we spent the day on twisty mountain roads, with gradients of 9% heading downwards! Thankfully we managed to get through without using any of the runaway tracks, which had obviously been used quite recently by the looks of the brake punch marks on the road. We arrived at the Indian Heritage RV site, at around 4pm and met Cherie & Steve, who had come to the area in November for the winter and loved the place so much and that they had decided not to leave – who can blame them when you look out onto the river every morning and the mountains are just a 5 minute drive away. We spent some time speaking with Steve & Cherie and chatted about England, as they had enjoyed their trip some years ago and remembered Bristol, Bath and Stonehenge. They made our stay extremely enjoyable and welcomed us into the area with open arms. Day Thirty Three Sat 23 August Johnson City - Galax, VA Distance: 112.6 miles Total Distance: 2806.5 miles Ride time: 8hrs 11 mins Including stops: 10hrs 24 mins Ave speed: 13.7mph Max speed: 44.1mph 85°F This morning we weren’t sad to leave our abode, and head out onto the road once again! The scenery was again the mountains, and it wasn’t long before we crossed the Appalachian Trail, where Brian and Pam took a short stroll. Around lunchtime we crossed into the state of Virginia, where the National Forest changed from the Cherokee to the Jefferson. We made a pitstop in Damascus, where we found lots of hikers inns, and a nice sized bike shop. Amy picked up some new gloves for Keith, as the padding had broken down in his original pair and his hands had been numb since practically the beginning of the trip. We drove through various little mountain top villages and found lots of Christmas tree farms, where we each reserved ourselves one and will return to pick it up in December! We stopped for the day in Galax, where Amy found her long awaited Snow Crab Legs for dinner and Pam and Brain found their new 4 bedroom / 2 bath house for $120,000! Day Thirty Two Fri 22 August Sevierville - Johnson City, TN Distance: 92.8 miles Total Distance: 2693.9 miles Ride time: 6hrs 33 mins Including stops: 9hrs 06 mins Ave speed: 14.1mph Max speed: 31.1mph 88°F Due to losing the hour yesterday, we had a lie-in today, and didn't have to get up until 7am, which made a nice change. We had our breakfast, whilst watching a fellow RVer conducting his morning exercise, of cycling around the RV park several times on a little fold-up bike. We travelled along the Dolly Parton Parkway for a bit this morning, where we found some new election signs “Dolly for President” – we didn’t know that she was in the running!! We started climbing today up some twisty, narrow roads into the mountains, and found a huge factory out in the middle of nowhere, with very little access, so the large trucks were sharing this road with us and Keith, making it hard going!! We stopped at the top of the hill for a while and waited for Keith, but after 90 minutes he still had not appeared, so we headed back down the road to see if we could find him. About 3 miles down the road we passed him, with a face of thunder on him. Apparently he had missed the turning for the 312 and had added 15 miles to the day in the wrong direction, as well as being up into the mountains! This was the first time that he had taken a wrong turning – not bad for 2500 miles! A little further up the road, the RV made a deliberate detour off of the road to take a look at Davy Crockett’s birthplace cabin, before ending the day in Johnson City, where we found that we were in the company of 300,000 other people who had come to the area for the NASCAR race at Bristol Speedway. Needless to say it took a while to find a hotel room, and even when we did we paid well over the odds for (in polite terms) “a below average room”!! Day Thirty One Thurs 21 August Pleasant Hill - Sevierville, TN Distance: 111.7 miles Total Distance: 2601.1 miles Ride time: 7hrs 46 mins Including stops: 9hrs 48 mins Ave speed: 14.3mph Max speed: 33.1mph 93°F This morning we drove back to Pleasant Hill, so that Keith could start at the same point as he ended last night, and he started cycling at around 8am. The RV left soon after and got about 5 minutes up the road when we realised that we were trailing our sewer hose behind us!! Unfortunately by the time we could pull over, the hose had been flattened and so we had to go on a search for a new one, which we found at an old wild west style wooden store, where Mr Bowman, give us the name and address of a couple who live in England, but visit the area regularly – in case we wanted to get in touch! The roads today were fairly smooth, and the traffic was quite light, making the long mileage today slightly more bearable. The scenery also changed today as we could begin to see the Smoky Mountains off in the distance ahead of us. At around 6pm we arrived at Sevierville, our new destination for the evening, and found numerous helicopter flight pads for sightseeing trips over the mountains, and eventually our planned RV park for the night, where we confirmed that we had actually lost an hour today, even though we were expecting to lose it tomorrow and therefore it was actually 7pm when we arrived, not 6!! Day Thirty Wed 20 August Nashville - Pleasant Hill, TN Distance: 101.7 miles Total Distance: 2489.4 miles Ride time: 6hrs 56 mins Including stops: 9hrs 12 mins Ave speed: 14.6mph Max speed: 32.5mph 95°F We sadly left Nashville this morning after having the hotel breakfast, and we headed east on the US 70 once again. Due to our unplanned stop, we are now re-gigging the stops of each day so that we can add the extra mileage to the last day. The heat has been getting steadily more humid over the last few days, and so today we back to pulling in every 15 miles for pitstops, instead of stretching them out to 20-25 miles. The RV stopped in a small market / gas station in Ragland Bottom, a mile up the hill from the Collins River, where we popped in for a coffee. Little did we know that just the day before, the whole area was apparently swarming in police cars and dogs, who were chasing a parole violator, into the woods. We were warned by the locals, not to head down into the woods, as there had already been 5 rattlesnakes spotted since Monday, along with the copperheads which were also in there! Good job Keith caught us up as he was thinking about making an early pitstop in the roughage! We stopped for the day, a little further up the road, in Pleasant Hill, and drove up the road to Crossville where we stayed at the Bean Pot Campground, the busiest RV site yet.