Another lovely day in the Shenandoah Valley. There was a headwind and it was a lot cooler than yesterday, but still very nice.

We stayed in Harrisonburg last night in the suburban congestion. So, I was expecting somewhat of a nightmare starting out the ride today as I made my way out of town. I was pleasantly surprised when only about two miles into my ride this morning, I once again found myself in the Virginia countryside.

After leaving Harrisonburg, I rode for about 6 miles on a frontage road of Interstate 81 which was unpleasant only because of the loudness of the high-speed traffic only a short distance away. The frontage road was followed by a few miles on a busy Highway 11 and then it was quiet country roads for the rest of the day.

I was headed towards Edinburg where Pat and I had agreed to meet for lunch. About ten miles from there, I saw something ahead in the road that turned out to be a turtle. I’ve seen quite a few turtles on the road since leaving Salt Lake City. Most of them have been in the South. This is the first one I had seen in quite a while and it was by far the largest of any of the turtles I’ve seen. As I approached, I started thinking about how I was going to stop and take a picture. Stopping along side the roads in this part of the country is a tricky thing to do because you usually don’t have a shoulder and the grass/gravel on the side of the road frequently drops away steeply. On top of that, the rolling hills rarely give you a good view of the roads to know whether there’s traffic approaching. Fortunately, you can usually hear the traffic approaching. When I didn’t see or hear any traffic, I felt I had an opportunity to stop.

After meeting Pat for lunch in Edinburg, I refilled my water bottles, discussed with Pat where we were going to meet in Front Royal (a campground south of town), and I was on my way again. First task after lunch was to haul myself up Edinburg Gap Road, a 4 mile long climb of about 800 feet. Not a huge climb, but the steepest and longest I had seen in a couple days now.

Towards the bottom of the climb, I saw “Construction Ahead” and “Flagman Ahead” and “One-lane Road Ahead” signs. Great, I thought, and remembered the last time I saw this kind of signs. It was the day I rode into Tennessee and I was the last “vehicle” in a caravan of traffic allowed to go through a stretch of one-lane road. I did my best to stay with the last car, but for about a mile and a quarter, I was riding solo on the one-lane road. About a quarter mile from the end of the one-lane stretch, I saw a caravan of traffic headed my way. The flagman forgot that I was still on the road. When I finally passed the flagman, I thanked the flagman profusely for his good work. Whether he detected the heavy sarcasm or not, I’m not sure.

Anyway, all that was running through my head as I saw the signs for a flagman. When I got to an area which had a lot of construction equipment sitting around, I didn’t see a flagman, but I did see a couple of construction workers hanging around the side of the road. I waved to them; because I wave to nearly everybody I see along side the road. They waved back and one yells to me “They’re waiting for you at the top!”

“OK, thanks,” I reply. “I hope they have a book to read!”

Edinburg Gap Road wasn’t so bad, really. All the trees made for some great shade and the traffic was pretty light. I must have hit the construction zone at lunch time, because I didn’t see anything or anybody except those two construction workers.

After a fast descent to Fort Valley, it was more rolling hills, picturesque little towns and scenic views of the valley as I headed north towards Front Royal.

We’re camping tonight at a very large campground outside of Front Royal. It looks like it used to be a KOA. We’re actually going to spend two nights here. Tomorrow will be a rest day to gather information about routes into the Washington D.C. area and also to do some maintenance on the bicycle.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 6:11 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.