Day 5 - Asheville to Waynesville
We had every bit of weather today...cloudy to deep fog to sunshine and back to cloudy. I was so pleased to see the sun I took a photo of my shadow! Markham provided a blinding glimpse of the obvious for me when I was fed up with the fog. He rode up and mentioned that's why these hills are called "The Smokey Mountains". Duh!
Our ride was mostly up for the first 30 miles. As the photo's show, today we crossed the highest point on the Blue Ridge Highway. That's where we had a picnic lunch which was one of our best. You don't have to worry about finding enough carbs when you bring your own.
The descent from the peak of the highway was special. You never had to hit the breaks as the curves are all sweepers and the straights are long enough that if you tuck, you could nearly touch 50 mph. Now there is a wrinkle...
We've had tunnels along the ride. Usually you can see the end from the beginning. In any event, our normal practice is to put on our lights. As we're bombing down, we come to this tunnel, we barely got on our lights but the change of daylight to dark tunnel made it tough to see. So we went speeding into a big black void that luckily ended pretty quickly.
After the turnoff to Waynesville, we paced line to our Inn. Tonight, we lose Rich, Markham and Reb.
