Wilmington to Front Royal

It has been a good long time between entries. I was at Steve and Kit's for a week. Could have blogged but took the week off. I had a great time visiting them. I am so impressed with the great life they have together. Simple life style but full of interesting, good lifestyle choices and never standing still, quiet and centered on what is important. They will soon celebrate one year of a formal commitment in Niagara Falls, and may they have many happy ones in the future. I so appreciated their hospitality. I got a chance to explore some of Wilmington on short bike rides each day. I rode out to historic New Castle, DE one day. It was once the largest city in the country, before Philadelphia and New York started to grow. William Penn landed there when arriving from England. It was a key spot on the underground railroad. I learned many other interesting tidbits from my tour of the city museum, which I entered looking for a restroom.

So finally the day to leave, Sunday, arrived and I got up and organized and fed and on the road by 8:45. It was difficult to leave. I was leaving this very comfortable place to connect with fellow riders who I knew only through email, and a brief introduction to Jim Smith when I came out to start the trip. Mostly, I was following a route which I had found on the internet and really had little information about. I was not even completely sure how long it would be, although I thought about 60 miles. I was also concerned about how my legs had been feeling the first part of the trip with Paul Kezmoh. I was not feeling very strong on the climbs and this had continued to be the case on the ride to Wilmington. So I contacted my 'coach' Ben Popp who had some good recommendations for me during the days off in Wilmington. I followed his recommedations and, guess what, they worked!

I rode to Delta, PA from Wilmington. Felt great all day. Went through Newark, DE, where Steve works at the Univ or Delaware. Stopped for coffee and bagel after that 18 miles and then on through lovely Maryland countryside. Rolling hills and horse farms. Then I got to Rising Sun, stopped for lunch. From there it was a somewhat hair-raising crossing of the Susquehana River on a two lane US Hwy 1 (busy) on the top of a dam. Crumbling concrete roadway and no shouler for about a mile. Speed limit was 30 but no one was going close to that. Nice relief to get that behind me.

It was another 20 miles through rolling countryside to the state line and into PA where I stayed at the Peach Bottom Inn, where I had stayed on the 2005 trip. Connected with Jim and Denny on the cell phone and we arranged to meet the next morning in the Delta Family Restaurant for breakfast. We did indeed and from there our approach to the Sky Line Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway began. We had a great ride that day through Maryland again, until the end. The campground we planned to ride to wanted $32 per tent. On general principle we refused and got directions to a Ramada Inn which were faulty and we ended up on some very ugly busy roads in the outer suburbs of Baltimore. All turned out well in the end. Jim carries a laptop with him and has a great mapping program which found us a good route out of town for the next morning.

The forecast was for thunderstorms, moving in from the nasty stuff in the middle of the country. It was overcast and some spitting rain was falling but other than a brief period in the middle of the morning no real steady rain. We had some great roads once out of the urban area. One interesting spot was a via duct over a reservoir so we stopped to take a picture. I reached in my handle bar bag for the camera and looked around and could not see my wallet. This was about 10 miles into the morning. I knew I had put it in there, but it was not there. I emptied the thing partially. We moved off the viaduct to take more time to look. I had terrible deja vu from experience in 2005 but could not see a good way out of this one. As I pulled up to stop Jim held out his hands over my bag. He said, "It is in there". I opened it up and pulled everything out and there it was, the black wallet on the bottom of the black bag, had reappeared. Jim explained this was his wife Joan's technique for finding things which are lost in plain site.

We stopped at Mt. Airey for second breakfast (one is not enough) and visited a huge and accomodating bike shop next door.
The remainder of the day was really interesting riding through some historic areas and again, beautiful horse farms on rolling acres, and an historic crossing of the Potomac into Virginia at White's Ferry, where Lee and his army had crossed during the Civil War. Then things turned not so fun with a 30 mile jaunt down US Hwy 15 to our campground. The ride through Leesburg was interesting. Very pretty little downtown area. The route was very busy and very noisey and the shoulder varied from nonexistent to almost adequate. The campground was a little further than we thought and the day was getting long, well over 80 miles. When we finally turned on to Shelter Lane and arrived at the Greenville Family Farm Campground there was great relief. The campsite in the woods was great, the hot shower was great, the camp dinner was great and I slept well too.

Today we rode just 40 miles to Front Royal, base camp, not that we plan to return. In the morning we assault the climb up to the Sky Line Drive through the Shenendoah National Park. Everyone says it is beautiful, you will love it, but you can have the first 4 miles. Guess it's a big climb. Thanks to Ben, I think I have the legs for it.