Day 85-Where We Go Back to Being Two Wheels and Sure Foot

But just for the night…

We didn’t have a tremendously long day today, but we did do some pretty good climbing. 

Not climbing quite yet. Just warming up. 

I saw this, and said to myself, okay, that’s how it’s going to be!

Mostly a one ish lane road. 

The top!

The ride down was on new pavement, and way longer than the ride up!

Tons of switchbacks. It was awesome!

We came to a place called Hayters Gap. As it was a gap, that meant we were soon going back up again. This climb wasn’t so steep and continuous as the first one. 

At Meadowview, we stopped at the Loves truck stop. You can get everything at the truck stop! We just had a snack. Funny thing…just before we were leaving, a big tour bus pulled into the parking lot. A voice came over the loudspeaker, “Attention all employees, a bus just pulled into the lot!” A bunch of older folks started streaming into the building…95% of them headed straight to the restrooms. I’m glad I didn’t have to go!

We had less than 10 miles to Damascus, but a few more hills. It was nothing too bad. 

There’s some Appalachian Mountains in the distance. 

We rolled into Damascus about noon. We planned to stay at the Broken Fiddle Hostel. That’s where we stayed when we were on the AT. As we were riding, still following the USBR 76 signs, I started to not recognize where we were. We stopped, and checked where the hostel was. Funny…we had ridden right by it, but from a different direction. We hopped on the Virginia Creeper Trail, and ended up coming out on the street the AT goes on. Then I recognized it. We laughed when we realized we had ridden right by it! 

Two wheels and Sure Foot stayed here in 2020! This was back when I was still enjoying the trail. Of course, we were only 470 miles in. 

I told “Ransom”, the guy working at the hostel that they need to put Astoria and Yorktown on here too. Although, he said not too many Trans Am cyclists stay here. 

We went and got some lunch, then did an old times sake walk down the street the AT follows. 

Ah…the ol’ white blaze!

This used to have a big mural of the AT saying Trail Town USA. Not anymore…

It’s very different in Damascus this time because everything is open. When we were here before, everything was closed because of COVID. Almost bigger than the AT is the Virginia Creeper Trail. There are numerous bike rental and shuttle places. Tomorrow, we will ride 11 miles of the trail until it goes away from the Trans Am. Once we are back on the road, we have a good climb (no surprises there).

T-Minus 9 days to Yorktown (11 days until home)