Four Corners Tour – Ride Day 29 – Tour Day 0 – August 12, 2015 – Wednesday

Start Time: 8:30 AM EDT
Stop Time: 7:00 PM EDT
Start Location: Front Royal, VA
Stop Location: Laurel Springs, NC
Lodging: Millers Camping
Breakfast: Campsite (cereal with almond milk)
Lunch: Blueridge Lodge (BLT and fries)
Dinner: Freeborne’s Eatery and Lodge (Virginia Filet with home fries)
Miles Traveled Today: 373
Weather: 58-68, Sunny all day

Route:Skyline Drive to

Blueridge Parkway

Today was about as good as it gets for road bike enthusiasts, Skyline Drive and Blueridge Parkway all day long, no red lights, no stop signs, no tractor trailers, and very little traffic.

The speed limit is 35 MPH on Skyline, and 45 MPH for the vast majority of the Blueridge Parkway. 35 is a little too slow, even when you factor in whatever fudge factor you live by (I hear numbers as high as 9 MPH), I usually try not to go more than 5 MPH over the posted speed limit.

50 MPH on the Blueridge Parkway makes for a very enjoyable ride. It’s fast enough to make the curves challenging, but not so fast to be overly dangerous.

The scenery is stunning every minute of every mile of both Skyline Drive and Blueridge Parkway (if it were not for the ranger station you pay at, you would not know you were going from one road to the other).

As with most days (actually all days), as the noon time of day approaches, I start thinking about my next meal.
Since I’ve ridden this ride every year for the past three years, I have a pretty good idea of where to find some vittles.

Today, the best place is one of the Blueridge Parkway rest area restaurants, the same one I have eaten lunch at the two previous rides through here.

The guy behind the counter has been making BLT’s at this restaurant for ten years, and I am glad he does, because they are excellent. The fries are not bad either, and they give you more than you can eat.

Later in the day I crossed the North Carolina state line, my last state on this tour.

As the day was winding down, and I reached my campground for the evening, I was on the lookout for my former business partner and good friend Mark Poole (he texted me when I was about two hours out to see when I would be getting to my campsite, and drove two hours to meet me).

Mark decided pretty quickly that he was not interested in my normal dinner menu (PB&J), and took me to a local establishment that he was familiar with.

Turns out the Virginia Filet is a thick slice of Bologna. It was aweful good if you ask me.

And the sunset we witnessed at dinner was not half bad.

My campground was really nice, with a driveway that connects directly to the Blueridge Parkway (very unusual, there are hardly any driveway connections to the Parkway).

Tomorrow will be a repeat of today in a lot of ways (spend the majority of the day riding the Blueridge Parkway). I can’t think of many better ways to spend a beautiful day.

There is a chance that another good friend and former business associate, Sven Lauden will join me for some portion of the ride tomorrow, which will be welcomed company.

Thank you Lord for revealing yourself through your creation, and all the beauty that surrounds us, and by the way, although you may not think I am paying attention, I do appreciate your travel mercies.

Tour Tip:

You can never have too many flashlights, and you better have backup batteries for those flashlights. Dark bad, light good.

Product Review:

I’m gonna have to give my J&M MP3 player a lower score than most of the items I have scored so far. I give it a 3 stars out of 5 because it works most of the time, but when it doesn’t, it will drive a guy bonkers.

On my bike, this unit it mounted in the trunk, and just can’t be trusted to work as intended 100% of the time. It is installed in the place of a CD player and communicates with both my Garmin Zumo GPS and my iPhone 6.

When it works, it lets me listen to my music on my iPhone, and control it using the handle bar controls. It also allows me to make and receive calls.

The last couple days it’s been wonkers, much worse than normal, so I just can’t give it a better rating.

Gonna sign off now, been a long day, and I’ve been up talking with Mark until after 11:00 (super late for me). So it’s time to get horizontal.