We've spent the last few days in "wild and wonderful" West Virginia (starting in Maryland and ending in Ohio). I think "weird" can also be thrown in there as well.
We spent most of our first West Virginia day on a low-trafficked highway called Corridor H; it was nearly brand new/still under construction and completely bizarre. It was all bright white, new concrete, 4 lanes, with a 65 mph speed limit. There were almost no cars on it besides the occasional truck so it was super eerie.
We had a few good analogies over the day to describe the weirdness of the highway: (1) it felt like we were in Inception and this random highway was just dropped into the mountains by someone's random thoughts, (2) it felt like we were living in a zombie apocalypse and we were just riding up huge abandoned highways, and (3) it kind of felt like a Suessian Lorax world where we were biking through mountains but there were all these coal mines mildly offset by a bunch of wind turbines. So in short, weird day of low traffic highway riding through the mountains, coal mines, and wind turbines.
On the first stretch of highway there were no trees around so we could see all the mountains and the wind turbines around us on the steady 4-mile climb. When we reached the top the views were well worth the slow, post-lunch ascent. (Note: lunch legs are a real thing. It's always so much harder to get your legs going after lunch because they think they are already done for the day).
The second stretch was up and over coal mines which was just strange. All we saw were coal trucks, construction trucks, and general bleakness. We were just cruising along the ridge line so for once we didn't really have views of mountains surrounding us. Overall, weird day, but we cruised into the host pretty early and we rewarded ourselves with Oreo Mcflurries!
Yesterday, all I have to say is 5 miles of gravel road. Gravel roads are tough. It's hard to go more than 5 mph on both the uphills and downhills and you're constantly scared of sliding on the gravel. The last half of the ride was really great though; I was riding with Justin and we just crushed the last 35 miles. The only weird part was a curvy 16 mile stretch that made it seem like we were going in circles. The road always seemed to veer right into the same farm/pasture.
Today was probably one of the best ride days in a while. We were out on the road by 6:30 and cruised through the first 30 miles by 9. The majority of the ride was just really pleasant and I was just starting to feel stronger and faster. I think I'm getting the hang of this biking everyday thing!
I was riding with Sarah Mead, Ryan (Salami), Henry, and B Mak and we averaged over 14 mph over the entire 80 miles. We were within 15 miles of the host by 2:30 so we decided to take a nice long break under a tree and reward ourselves with more ice cream - this time Blizzards from Dairy Queen. If you're sensing a theme, you would be right. We love our days end ice cream on this trip.
We head into our 4th ride day in a row tomorrow and I believe it's our longest ride yet. Now that we're in Ohio I'm hoping that it becomes a tad less hilly, but everyday is a surprise...but that's what I love about this adventure!