I'd planned on doing an average of 60 miles a day for eight days with an average elevation gain of 6500 feet each day. I used a BOB trailer to haul gear behind my cyclocross bike. Long story short, I ended up doing roughly half of the parkway before I decided to call maggie to come rescue me. I enjoyed touring, but learned several lessons that make a successful tour tricky: no matter how strong of a cyclist one is- a fully loaded trailer should be matched with a triple- i rode a compact double with a mtn cassette- but started having really bad knee problems within one day of the tour, not riding for a month and being sick for two weeks before starting and expecting to still have a strong ride is rather silly and i should have known better, and carrying all of the tour's food from the start is also reasonably goofy.
So, all in all, I had a great experience. The parkway is beautiful and i encourage anyone who has an oppourtunity to enjoy some (or all) of the 470 miles. I like touring and will plan another trip (with proper gearing this time!). Pictures below.
Boone and Asheville
After the tour Maggie and I went to Boone for the afternoon, had food at the Black Cat, and walked around. Boone's a nice place, but the traffic (of all the things we didn't expect) drove us crazy. And yeah that was intended. Read the sentence again.
We spent the next day in Asheville- which was fantastic. We randomly ran into Ben Acree... still that's not all that surprising somehow. Ben may or may not be in Denmark right now. We went to the Highland Brewery, lucked into a Magic Hat tasting at a beer store, and had food and beverage at barley's. It was a nice place to be.
And this sign was great (though I didn't understand it)
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