Day 13: Mt. Rogers to Rosedale, VA.

Miles today: 60ish.

Today started out super easy: 20 miles of consistent downhills! FINALLY!! Stopped in Damascus after about an hour and we found it a little odd. Damascus is basically a tourist town for people who don't really ever ride bikes; the town has everything they need to rent a fleet of bicycles for their group and be bused up the mountain, bikes and all, and ride down the Virginia Creeper Trail back to Damascus at the bottom, and spend more money at the restaurants. The town consists of three bike shops, which were basically rental outlets and not repair shops, a coffee shop (named, of course, "Mojoe's"), and a "country store"/restaurant. We stopped for breakfast at the "country store". The quotation marks are deserved because of the Country Crock margarine, Aunt Jemima syrup and boxed-mix pancakes we were served, and the mass-produced country-style home decorations they had for sale. We understood what they were going for, but felt that it really missed the mark.

We went on and ended up meeting yet another cyclist on a water break. Danny is going to San Francisco as well; he just graduated from Georgetown last year and is heading to San Fran to visit his parents who live there. Danny's a great person to meet on this sort of travel; positive attitude and has a way with words that just makes you laugh. We ended up sticking together for the rest of the day.

We came upon the abomination called Hayter's Gap after the water break; I Hayted it. Several miles of steep, winding uphill climbing. That's all I will say about that.

Stopped to eat in Rosedale and decided that the Gap took too much out of us to continue on to where we'd been intending, so we started looking around for a place to camp. Asked for suggestions at an antiques store and ended up receiving a very generous invitation to camp behind the store. The woman who owns it sent us some food to eat with her daughter, and her son who lives in an apartment next to the store entertained us with some great conversation. Food, a place to sleep, good conversation, and a shower: life is good.

Tomorrow: Kentucky!