As I expected, I wasn't able to keep up while we were moving.
So, this is a placeholder for Monday. We rode NC197 to Burnsville. This was one of the recommended rides by many here and at Expo. There was only a short (ten mile-ish) gravel section up at the top over the pass, and that was all the gravel we got to do this trip, but it was an awesome ride nonetheless.
Had a good lunch at Garden Deli in Burnsville.
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Then we rode NC80 down to Marion. This was actually a surprise, as I didn't expect it to be as twisty and fun and in as good shape as it was. There was a little construction right at the start of it, but once we were past that, it was smooth twisty asphalt for the rest of the afternoon with hardly any traffic. I found no evidence that NC DOT has any clue what chip-seal is and I hope they remain ignorant of its existence.
<pictures here later>
It was still a little early, but the skies had been threatening rain most of the day and we felt pretty good about the riding we had gotten in this day, so we decided to head to Lake James State Park and set up camp. We got there around 1630. The camp sites were walk in, so we would have to unload all of the stuff off of our bikes and haul it down about a half mile but we were the only people in the whole place for that night except for the park hosts. After checking it out and a little discussion about how hauling our wet gear back up the hill was going to be no fun we decided to stay anyway. The people we ran into were packing out and told us the best site to take, so we followed their advice and ended up with a great view.
We set up camp then did a little hike and on our way back to camp the rain started. It stayed pretty light for a bit then started coming in hard for the rest of the night. Luckily we were at the tail end of the weather system that was moving through, so no thunderstorms, just some steady rain until about 0900 the next morning.
Dinner: Mountain House Chicken Risotto, quite tasty.
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