Asheville to Forest City, NC—63 miles

Sunday, October 2, 2005

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After breakfast in our room, we headed down to the start of the tour at Christ School where parked our car for the week, always a slightly traumatic time. Would the car be secure for the week? Did we have everything we needed? We found a spot for the car, dropped our bags at the luggage truck, and unloaded our bikes. We would both be riding recumbents on this tour, the RANS V-Rex for me and the Tour Easy for Kerie.

By the time we had parked the car and were ready to ride, we were among the last to leave the school,
It's all downhill from here
which is par for the course for us on these multi-day tours. Start late, stop often, finish late. It was a scenic but very hilly ride with some exciting downhills. Overall we would be losing elevation throughout the week, but there were many climbs along the way.

The scenic highlight of the day was
Rocky Broad River
Chimney Rock, a privately owned park in Hickory Nut Gorge, about 25 miles from Asheville. We stopped at a deli in the town for lunch beside the Rocky Broad River. There was a brief shower as we finished lunch and headed to the rest stop at Lake Lure, a man-made lake fed by the Rocky Broad River. From there we caught the bus up to Chimney Rock.

We paid the $14 entry fee which was not included in the tour fee.
From the base of Chimney Rock we took the elevator to the top where we strolled out onto the rock. Had there been more time, it would have been much more fun to do some hiking in the area. It would be easy to spend a day exploring in the area, especially when there's a clear view, which was not the case when we were there. From atop Chimney Rock we could see Lake Lure, but not much further. On a clear day the view is said to extend for 70 miles.

This is a picture that Kerie took atop Chimney Rock. The view is even more obscured due to a large, greasy finger print that one of us left on the camera lens. Unfortunately, this added a certain unwelcome look to the photos that I took over the next couple of days.

Our motel was located about 1.5 miles from the campground at Dunbar Elementary School. We headed straight there to take a shower and catch the bus back to the camp for dinner. To avoid having to search for a meal each night, we had decided to sign up for some of the camp meals in smaller towns where it looked like there were fewer restaurant options. This was not a good plan, as it turned out that the shuttle buses during the first half of the trip were very unreliable, with intervals as long as 45 minutes or more between buses, while others came in pairs, the following bus being empty.

While waiting, we met a woman cyclist from Bald Head, NC, a small community south of Wilmington. She was looking for food as well and ended up walking across a busy, four-lane road with no sidewalks to a place that served wine. After waiting nearly 45 minutes we settled for a nearby seafood place, Dockside Seafood, where I had some excellent broiled perch and hush puppies.

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