Days 10 and 11: Troutville, VA to Rural Retreat, VA.

Miles on Day 10: 63. Miles on Day 11: 64. Total miles: 629.

Left the very welcoming town of Troutville and realized the reason why Cecil, the man who takes care of the city park we camped in, sounded so familiar: I'm pretty sure he narrated the movie Charlotte's Web. Were intending to stop for the night in Radford at the Lees', a family who hosts Trans-America bikers, but it turns out they were on vacation. It appears that Virginia has some underground network of people who have places for cyclists to stay, perfectly spaced along the route, who know about each other and advertise each other's existence; the Cookie Lady told us we should stop at Mallard Duck campground (the one owned by Larry the Cable Guy's brother, who asked about the Cookie Lady), then the next night in Troutville Cecil assured us that the ride to the Lees' wouldn't be too difficult. It would have been really nice if the Lees had been home, because Lou experienced some trouble with his front wheel and we had to stop for the day in Radford anyway. The owner of the only bike shop in town, a short, middle-aged man with a crowded little shop and a cat he brings to work, was kind enough to keep the shop open an extra hour for us to get there and then another hour to fix the wheel! This guy was super helpful and even made sure to ask me (twice!) if my bike needed anything looked at, two hours after closing time. It was getting late by then, so we ended up just getting a hotel in Radford, which the shopowner in his extreme helpfulness called to find the most, um, economical.

Today was really hot and had a lot of uphills, but we stopped to pick wild blackberries on the side of the road and ended up running into another Trans-Am'er! Clay Bedford is a teacher from Washington state. We saw his entry in the guestbook at the church we stayed at last week and had been hoping to run into him! He's a super nice guy and took a picture of us to put on his blog. Camping tonight in Rural Retreat by a lake. Rode up the street after dinner to hear what we thought would be live bluegrass music, but it turns out the place was closed, so it's early to bed and (hopefully) early to rise!