Baileyton, Tennessee

I got up before dawn again today to hit the road early.  Larry got up around dawn and saw me off.  It was a big foggy in town when I started pedaling, so I got my bright flashing red light out of my bag and clipped it to the back of my helmet.  It truly is an irritatingly bright light.  I'm guessing drivers don't like me when it's on, but I'm pretty sure they see me.  As I got out of town, the fog got more dense and it felt like I was sucking on the output of a humidifier when I was climbing the hills on the outskirts of town.  On my sunglasses I have a little mirror that clips on to the frame so I can see if cars are coming, so I like to have those on at all times when riding, but the fog kept collecting on my glasses so I couldn't see.  My sunglasses also have interchangeable lenses.  I popped out the lenses and kept riding.  When I see my sunglasses without the lenses, they remind me of those goofy looking glasses that the blue people wear when they fly on their dinosaur-birds in the movie Avatar.  If you haven't seen the movie, don't worry about it.  If you have and don't know what I'm talking about, look at them next time, and you'll know what my sunglasses look like without lenses.

When I was away from town, I ended up on a road that paralleled the French Broad River.  It's a north-flowing river, so I got to coast down hill for a while out of Asheville.  This was a bitter-sweet thing, as I knew the more I descended, the more I would have to climb later.  It was nice to follow the river though.  It was a very relaxing ride.  Near the town of Marshall, NC, I started to climb out of my valley.  I really expected things to be worse than they were.  Coming back down was a bit unnerving.  Hwy 208 and whatever road that turns into when it crosses into Tennessee is not a straight road.  Coming down I had to ride my brakes pretty hard to keep myself on the road.  When a sign says the speed limit is 20mph, that applies to loaded touring bikes, too.  I'm sure a light road bike could handle faster, but when I pushed things a little faster around some corners, I knew I needed to slow down.

I climbed the last major pass of North Carolina and crossed over to Tennessee just in time to see two guys sitting on the side of the road.  I was a little confused.  Generally I'm the guy on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.  I pulled over to see what their story was, and as it turns out, I was crossing the Appalachian Trail.  These guys had just hiked about 4 days worth of it and were waiting to be picked up.  The one that I was talking to mostly had also just biked from the Georgia/Florida state line to the southern end of the state.  They seemed like my kind of people.  I gave them my card, and maybe they'll see this post.

I got to Greeneville, TN, shortly after 12:15pm.  This would have been too short a day if I had stopped there, so I found a McDonald's so I could get on the internet to find a campground.  As I searched, the one that seemed within a decent range and still in the right direction was the Baileyton RV Park  & Willowview Cabins.  I am specifically mentioning the name because this one is worth mentioning.  My last experience at an RV park (just north of Travelers Rest, SC) probably made me appreciate this experience just that much more.  I checked in at the office, paid, then went to set up my tent.  As I was setting up, one of the employees said that I needed to find a place with more shade than where I was at, so she took my bags up towards the picnic pavilion.  I toted the rest of my stuff up there and ended up making small talk with a few other residents and employees as I went there.  The Restrooms were about as clean as any campground I've seen in my travels thus far, and when I checked in, the woman at the desk told me that if I ever found anything a mess, I needed to call her so that she could make it right.

When I had camp set up, I checked my messages and I had one from my sister saying that I should call a guy at the Greeneville, TN, newspaper.  I called him and he sent someone out to get a picture of me.  I'm guessing that they'll run a story in the paper. If they do, and anyone from Greeneville reads this, thanks for checking out my site.

As I set up camp, a man that had been mowing and trimming eventually came over to chat with me, and he offered to take me to supper.  He just moved to the campground and will be here for the next 5 years as he works as a surgical tech in the area.  We chatted and eventually got on the topic of religion (which can get interesting here in the "Bible Belt", as one woman in McDonald's bragged to me).  When I got back to my campsite, I found that the owner of the RV park had refunded the charge to my credit card, and had included a note saying: "Thank you for caring for others."  The last RV park I was at was made a positive experience by Jeff and Joyce.  This experience has been all around positive.

Tomorrow I should make it into Virginia, followed shortly by Kentucky and eventually West Virginia.  We shall see what terrain awaits for me there.  I'm looking forward to the Shenandoah Valley after West Virginia.  The worst (terrain) should be behind me then.