Day 5 Boone North Carolina to Fancy Gap Virginia

We rode 92 miles today, all on the Blue Ridge Parkway with the exception of about 20 miles on back roads to get from Boone back to the Parkway. This section of the Parkway is different than the last two days. The climbs and descents are much shorter, the elevation is less and there are many more private homes and farms right along the road. Some of the farms are beautiful. There were 4 or 5 Christmas tree farms and many of what looked to me to be "gentlemen farmers" with a large spread of land, large home and then horses grazing on that spread of land. There was less traffic on this portion of the Parkway as well. There are no tunnels and without the immense climbs and descents of the section between Cherokee and Boone perhaps it just isn't as attractive to motorcyclists and high performance cars. The lower traffic made it great for cycling though.

The day started off really cool and foggy but by the end of the day it was almost too warm going up a lot of the climbs. With the sun beating down on you and not much air moving because of your slow speed it gets too warm very quickly. But for the first couple of hours I was glad I had my windbreaker for the 40 mph descents at 55 degrees.

I mentioned yesterday that at some point I would talk a little about how Pactour works. I'll do this over the next week or two but now is a good time to start. One of the first things you learn is that they are really strict about cleanliness around the food at the rest and lunch stops. Before going any further I should mention that they have rest stops about every 25 miles and then whichever rest stop ends up being just past the halfway point becomes the lunch stop. The requirement is when you come in to the rest stops you must wash your hands before getting any food or drink. They have a thermos with a spigot and the thermos contains a soap and water mixture. Apparently years ago they had trouble with one or two people on the trip getting sick and by the end of the trip everybody was sick. So they found by requiring this they were able to contain illness. There are many more aspects of Pactour to talk about in the days ahead.

Tomorrow is a short ride back on the Parkway up to Roanoke.