Blue Ridge Parkway Bike Tour: Part 1

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Tags: Bike Tour,Bikepacking,Blue Ridge Parkway,Surly ECR,Surly Ogre,Adventure,Zpacks Duplex,Blue Ridge Mountains,Appalachian Trail,AT,Great Smoky Mountains,National Park System,UL Backpacking Gear

Video Transcription

it is Monday October 8 2018 and me and this lady are about to start a bike tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway and yeah it's 469 miles to shannond own a tional park we are currently standing on the border of Smoky Mountain National Park and for some of you that are not familiar the Blue Ridge Parkway is also part of the parks system so it's kind of like a national park that connects to national parks pretty cool for a couple National Park geeks like snuggles and I pretty fun

first eight miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway touch a lot of elevation almost 3,000 feet of elevation to be exact sesame sticks you don't like them the best pocket so we are at the took the second highest point of Blue Ridge something knob something get known this is in Sinagra knob so we have essentially done 18 miles and almost 8,000 feet of elevation game well after over 7800 feet of elevation gain and 27 miles total we are done for the day the day here on a wayside right next to the parkway you can kind of see the parkway right here and we are chilling at this picnic table and behind me is like a little stealth camp spot or just right off the road we were told by someone that works for the Park Service that as long as you are like off of the parkway so far you should be good to camp so found a little bit of water down the way stocked up on water and I want to go set up the tent we're gonna crash here for the night and in the morning we basically have an 11 mile climb just straight up out of here bummer but after that it should be like a nice cruise all the way to Asheville and yeah

so time to make home [Music]

good morning we have started our 11 mile climb to the highest point of the Blue Ridge Parkway and our plan is to about every single mile stop off on these little these little pull off beautiful morning manases climb steep being out on the west coast and climbing those mountains forget how steep the mountains in the East Coast really are six thousand 53 feet we have made it to the highest point of the Blue Ridge Parkway so it's really cold and windy up here [Music]

so after riding most of the day yesterday in fog and rain and clouds and everything else that we had on the Parkway we decided to dip down here into Asheville North Carolina so snuggles and I spent the night last night and then today and tonight a massive storm is actually supposed to be rolling in from a hurricane that's going on south of here so since the Parkway was so nasty yesterday I think that we were just gonna chill out tonight and we happen to run into this fella right here that would be Einstein you guys might remember him from my PCT videos he was one of the fellers that I finished the last hundred miles with a couple hundred miles right yeah like 260 miles worth so he's actually on a bike tour as well riding from LA all the way back to Washington DC so we happened to meet up here so we're gonna hang out tonight okay we're gonna try to hit it tomorrow maybe late it all depends on this storm pretty nasty storm and it really sucked riding on the Parkway yesterday and all the fog and stuff just dangerous so [Music]

well after - two days off in Asheville because of the storms we are finally back on the Parkway and Einstein is going to join us for a little bit of time huge thanks to Joe and Kippy for taking us in and putting us up for the night and feeding us and giving us a ride back to the parkway and everything pretty amazing hosts in Asheville so thank you guys now we've got a big old climb about Asheville towards Mount Mitchell and it's cold it's a good point it is cold pretty cool

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who some really steep climbs today it's nice to take little breaks and say even though the climbs are steep today we just got done passing Mount Mitchell which we didn't go up to Mount Mitchell but we did ride past Mount Mitchell and from that point on that is the highest we will be on the entire Parkway from here all the way to the Shannon doze so we got all the highest elevation stuff out of the way I'm gonna go to Austria see like couscous to pray right not expecting that at all today ended up being a pretty decent day for the first day back on the Parkway since we had to get off due to the storms ended up doing 53 miles today and ended the day at Crabtree falls campground so for the first time out here we actually paid for a campground but it's a pretty nice campground there's a water in a bathroom and you know it's owned by the National Park System so nice to give them money every once in a while eating some food and I've got to crash out so we can do it again tomorrow [Music]

well we got a pretty late start today on purpose roll a cold chilly windy this morning so we decided to kinda take our time roll out late but ever since we left camp this morning has just been an aggravation we keep trying to stop at all these little restaurants and waste sides and convenience stores and they're either closed or they won't serve us food so we actually tried to stop in this place called the Little Switzerland in and they refused to serve us breakfast

they weren't busy the head room we had money but they said that we had to be guests to eat at the restaurant that wasn't in the hotel it was attached to the hotel

[Music]

we just dropped off the parkway right here on 181 and came down to this place called Krista's general store and deli and had an awesome sandwich and some hot pinto beans and some fresh brewed iced tea and now we're gonna hop back on the Parkway and I think ride a little bit further north about six seven miles to Linville and then I think that we're gonna get off into Linville tonight and probably find a place to stay in Lindo we were planning on camping tonight but it's supposed to store them so I think we're just gonna go ahead and get a place and just kind of take it easy good morning it is well it's not really a good morning it's nasty it's cold it's raining it's we just left town Linville about 30 minutes ago and had a two-mile ride back to the Parkway had to walk this last section I was it's super steep and I don't want to wear myself out for actually get to the turquoise so we're gonna try to do another 50 today to get to a trading post I think is what it's called and that should be where we stop for the night today's trains shouldn't be too bad but with the rain and the fog and the cold might not make it the easiest day so so we were up on the Parkway and we essentially got rained and froze out as insanely cold and same with foggy and sing me wet and we are going into blowing around there's this little visitor sooner to stop it though [Music]

so today ended up not being so eventful we ended up only doing 17 miles on the Parkway because the temperature dropped to about 30-something degrees this morning

tons of fog tons of rain tons of headwind when you're hiking it's a totally different story is you're not moving so fast when you're on a bike you're coming down a hill or a mountain in this case and a a hardcore headwind with all the coldness it definitely makes a difference so we bailed out and we came down here to Blowing Rock North Carolina which is cool little shop and yeah looks like we're staying here for the night and then tomorrow is supposed to be a lot better so we're gonna roll out in the morning [Music]

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