Flight from the Foilage

After the epic day of climb through the park, we road towards Asheville, NC and our final state - South Carolina. The day started with another brutal climb. One of the local folks called us "f***ing idiots" on the way up. I partially agreed with his assessment of the situation.

We climbed higher and higer continuing to shed layers as the day started at 35 degrees and peaked in the mid 70's. We finally hit the top of the pass and road a massive downhill through another terrible tourist city. Needing new calories stat, Dave found a great Italian restaurant. He ordered a spaghetti and meatball pizza. Fearing what that would entail, I just ordered the same but without the pizza format. The food came to the table, and Dave's pizza won the day. Definitely one of the best orders of the trip.

And then one of my favorite parts of the trip occurred. We were riding mostly in rolling hills, and we though we were finally out of the the mountains. That's when the best sign you can see on the road appeared. The sign beamed back at us due to the reflecton from our headlamps. The sign was a bright yellow diamond. It included the outline of a truck heading straight down at an angle with "4 miles" neatly printed below. This was an unexptected decent. It came out of nowhere and would proveto be the best downhill of my life. A full moon shined on the horizon and the last gasps of the sun provided just enough light to see the fall foilage. The road was consistently steep and windy. We maintained speeds well over 30 miles per hour and finally fell out of the last mountain range the United States of America had to offer.

We road deep into the night in order to set up for the grand finale. The people in South Carolina were the nicest since Nebraska. People gave us much needed encouragement and were genuinely excited about what our trip. It was late at night and their excitement only helped us get to where we needed to go. We talked to one family in a Subway gas station that even wanted their picture take with us. (If you are that family, please send us your email address. I would like to see that photo if possible and thanks again for helping us with a place to eat.)

The day ended 114.1 miles from our campsite in the park to Spartanberg, SC. A lot of hard miles, but The Berg would quickly become an unplanned launching pad as we prepared to get shot into the ocean.