June 3, 2001.
Elk Garden Hostel to just west of Breaks Interstate Park, Virginia. (49 mi.) Mile 622
Last
night in Virginia
We are just one mile east of the
Kentucky border this evening, about to leave Virginia. We have so many images
of Virginia in our memory. Before we left home, friends and family reminded us
to take "people pictures", but often the image is fleeting and
destroyed by aiming a camera at someone who does not want to be caught on
film. Here are a few of the hundreds of "people" images that stick
in our mind from Virginia:
1) A horde of school children
running wild down Monticello's Mulberry Row, more excited in the cheap plastic
rain parkas they had been issued then the fact that Thomas Jefferson's slaves
once lived and worked there.
2) The elderly woman outside her
aging circa 1800 farmhouse early in the morning, still in her housecoat,
checking on her flowers and garden. We wondered what history and soul that
house held for her, and if there were adult children somewhere tearing their
hair that Mother was getting too old to live there alone but too stubborn to
move.
3) The old black man in tattered
clothes and a straw hat sitting outside a small market where we stopped for
something to drink, singing black spirituals to himself in a deep, beautiful
voice. I could have listened for hours, but he eventually got up and tottered
down the street, looking slightly confused.
4) The mock Colonist dressed in
period costume and three-cornered hat in Colonial Williamsburg, trying not to
break his early American accent as he yelled at some young tourists to stop
playing around the tail end of the draft horse tethered nearby.
And everywhere, people of all types
wishing us well and offering the best in hospitality, like Jim and Wendy of
Williamsburg who were driving by and saw us studying the map, pulled over, and
offered to guide us on our way.
And everywhere, people mowing those
huge lawns. Virginia has been a very beautiful, interesting, and challenging
state.
We had an opportunity to stay at
Breaks Interstate Park, a few miles east of us, and even checked out the lush
wooded campground, but opted again for shelter. It rained hard all last night
and we expected rain tonight. Our new friend Walter joined us for breakfast in
Honaker, then we said good-bye to go our respective paces in the same
direction.
It was another day of hill-climbing
along the Cumberland Scenic Route. We did have some flatter riding and even
opportunity for me to draft Mike, which cuts my energy expenditure by about 1/3.
We also had some long mountain descents, but Mike has had problems with a brake
pad and we are having replacements mailed ahead to us. Tomorrow will be another
challenging day of climbing, but we are grateful that the weather has been
unseasonably cool, since we imagine that when the terrain finally flattens, we
will have new challenges in heat and wind.
1) 
2) 
1) Birchleaf Post Office -
entering an area of economic depression
2)
View point over Breaks Interstate Park on the Virginia-Kentucky border
On to Kentucky tomorrow.
