Day Five - Get on the Scene, like a sex machine

We woke at our campsite to have breakfast with the ducks, and set off on the single hardest day of our entire trip. We began the climb to Afton, VA to see the house of June Curry, the cookie lady.
The cookie lady has been giving out free water to bikers since the early days of the Trans America route. Afton is a very small town, with very little accommodations available, and just so happens to be at the top of a massive hill. Since there is no place for bikers to stay in Afton, and not much but wilderness on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the cookie lady took it upon herself to provide housing, water, and now free meals to passing bikers.
All she asks is that bikers send her a postcard from their destination, and her house is full of them. She's a tough old lady, who detailed all her many falls of late, but nowadays her helper Debbie runs the bike house.

These were some of the nicest people we've met, and kept us entertained while Tim and I recharged on that one essential ingredient: positive mental attitude (PMA)
We left her house and began the long arduous climb up the Blue Ridge mountains. After the climb to Afton, it didn't seem all that hard.

We were just glad to be off HWY 250, hopefully for good.
Taking the cookie lady's advice, we took our time, and stopped often to enjoy the scenery.




There were helpful signs marking our progress up the mountain.


If you can't read that, the sign says 3119 ft. We climbed a total of about 2000 ft that day!
I can't decide, which is a better victory pose. This one...
Or this one...

Victory is ours! Fortuitously we accidentally dialed the number of Royal Oaks cabins, a luxury cabin resort in Love, VA, looking for the national forest service campground, and the guy on the phone was really nice. He told us there was no sense in us going down the huge hill 4 miles off our route to get to the campsite, he would totally let us camp on the grounds for $15, the exact rate we payed the night before. Believe it or not, there was wi-fi and the country store had beer! We made camp content with our luck... all that changed the next day...