Day 9 - Rural Retreat, VA to Hayter's Gap, VA - 80 mi

This morning I discovered the secret to morning biking - stopping and eating a second breakfast after 20 miles. We arrived at Jerry's Kitchen & Goods to devour some biscuits and gravy, eggs, and bacon. It was awesome!


From there we hit the first rain storm of the trip and got soaked for a few hours while riding to Damascus, VA. The descent into Damascus was picture perfect, a small river followed us down the mountain and all I wanted to do was stop, eat a picnic lunch, and start fly fishing.


Once in Damascus, Pepper, our travel companion who is a manager at Sundog Outfitters welcomed us to his store with a 30% discount on everything for those who were missing some gear. I picked up some snack bars with super high amounts of protein, a clamp to grab my cook pot when the water is boiling (no more blisters!), and an extra tank of fuel. Speaking of blisters - the gigantic one on my foot deflated yesterday! I hope that the skin underneath has healed and the fluid was no longer needed. I will definitely not pull the skin off of the blister and hope that everything is healing A-OK. Finally, Pepper also hooked us up with a free pizza lunch at the local pizza joint - excellent pizza at the time!

I could definitely feel the pizza as our trip progressed - heartburn out the wazoo! I eventually fueled up with some Jelly Belly sport beans in preparation for climbing Hayter's Gap mountain. It was a super climb with tons of switch backs and extremely steep elevation gains. The end was never in sight! I am unsure about how many feet we climbed, but it was quite a challenge. I kind of equated it to climbing Mountain Lake in Blacksburg except steeper and 4 miles long rather than 7 miles. All in all, climbing the hill was an awesome experience as the entire team cheared each rider to the top as they arrived. Definitely a power booster at the top of the mountain. The weather was perfect to climb the mountain, cloudy with no chance of sun!


From there we cruised about 7 miles down to a local church to crash for the night - super tired!

Unfortunately, the internet is pretty slow here and I will most likely not be able to upload any pictures - when available, I will update the past few days with some photos.