The morning of our last ride here in Asheville was really nice even though it promised to be a very warm day. It seems as though the haze and fog has been moved out by the fronts that have been coming through. This is a video off our back deck that I took that really shoes the view.
A little ways into the climb I was hanging back and looking for pictures and I took this one of the guys ring. Paul and Tom at the front with Bill just ahead of me.
Here's a shot of Paul, Tom and Bill catching up after they stopped for food and drink. I kept going in order to set up to take this picture and the following vid.
And of course there were more tunnels, some real long on this on this part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I only didn't really care for one of the tunnels, it was so long you had to ride in the dark. I found our lights to be pretty useless, and I started to get vertigo because it was hard to tell what side was up without having visual references. I've never felt that way on a bike before so I unclipped in case I fell over. Luckily, I did not and soon enough was back into daylight.
After watching the guys ride by, we continued on our ride up to Mt Pisgah. I continued to lag behind taking pics and looking at whatever scenery I could find. Here are some examples.
Here's a short clip I took at the Mills River Valley Overlook.
When we reached Mt Pisgah, I decided I had enough riding and descended back towards the SUV. Bill continued on, but turned back shortly after I did. Paul and Tom continued on for a bit and took some shots of themselves at a few more of the overlooks before turing and heading back themselves.
We crossed this river on the start of the climb but didn't have time to take a picture then so I stopped on the descent to get a shot. You can see some of the road starting to climb up on the hill on the right ride of the river.
Here I captured the last two riders, Tom and Paul, returning from the climb, signaling the ending of our riding for this trip!
After lunch, we headed back to the house and hung around for a bit then went out for dinner at a great Barbeque restaurant called Countryside BBQ. the food was pretty darn good and you can't beat the price. Tom and Paul couldn't resist the great looking deserts.
After dinner we headed back to the house and had a glass of wine and enjoyed the great sunset on the porch. We also too this picture to commemorate the end of our trip. The sunset turned out to be spectacular!
And I leave this trip with our honorary mascot, Jim Day, he was with us in spirit and in jokes which actually ended early in the trip with a great comeback!
Rather than park at the Starbucks as planned we decided to drive a little ways on the parkway until we found a rest area to park. We ended up parking in a dirt area under some tress that was at a trail head. Once again, another great parking spot.
The early ride was pretty busy traffic wise as we were still close to Asheville, but soon enough we were back to the normal quiet roads that we had been riding. I found this side of the Blue Ridge to not be as interesting as the sections north of Asheville, but that may be due to riding burnout. I tend to like more switchbacks and some steeper climbs, neither of which we found on this side.
