The tour headed south this past weekend into North Carolina to pedal two virgin locations for me: DuPont State Forest and Pisgah National Forest. I am fortunate to have today off as this rider is one sore individual. The views at the top are gorgeous but there is no chair lift to pull the rider up to said top so the first portion of each ride is spent in grandma gear slowing plodding up the hills/mountains for the ridge ride down. To add to the fun, I took a nice spill Saturday morning over the handlebars. The attached six minute video has a clip from that (at about 1:48 in) in addition to a SERIOUS creek/river crossing in DuPont (at about 2:59 in). The weather was blue skies when I was there but the preceding week brought about some serious rain so the water level was very high. A usual ankle deep crossing with a current trickling became a knee deep hoof with your bike over your head or it was going down the river if it touched the water. I saw one rider attempt the barefoot walk across with his shoes in hand and one shoe went down the river; never to be seen again. He still had five miles or so back to the parking lot....with one shoe. I personally did the 'shoes on' attempt as I was riding in my hiking boots; not clip-on shoes with plastic bottoms. With a little help from some riders on the other side, I successfully made it across. A rider later in the journey advised the best tactic for walking across slippery rocks in a river is with no shoes but keeping the socks on. So there you go in that you learned something reading this today.
As far as local flavor, I stayed in the city of Brevard, North Carolina. Known for white squirrels (looked it up beforehand) and I did indeed see said white squirrels roaming in abundance. Some good people in the area and had a delicious chicken dinner on my birthday. The nearest celebrity in the area according to the locals is apparently Steve Martin as I believe his wife has ties to the area.
Scrapes and sore muscles/joints aside (waaa.....), a nice soul cleansing experience in western Carolina.
Trail Head
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| DuPont State Forest |
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| Pisgah National Forest |
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| Pisgah National Forest |
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| I didn't get towed but this sign in Brevard, NC made me laugh. |
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| Brevard, NC |
