Tomorrow is going to be my last tough ride before I arrive at Kitty Hawk. I’m going to traverse the Blue Ridge Mountains and head down to the Piedmont Plateau.
It is the last mountain I must climb before arriving at Kitty Hawk.
Remember this song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoCPuhhE6dwI
When I was a kid in Seat Pleasant MD (just outside of Washington D.C.) my Mom and Dad took our family to see ‘The Sound of Music’ when it first came out in 1965. We were raised Catholic and it was one of the few films that weren’t ‘CONDEMNED’ by the church at the time, so we could see it without picking up any sin. It also had nuns in the film so it had to be good.
Anyway, there were a lot of great songs in that musical and one that really stuck with me was ‘Climb Every Mountain’. Remember ‘Do Re Mi’, ‘So Long, Farewell’, ‘Maria’ (How do you solve a problem like), ‘The Lonely Goatherd’, ‘My Favorite Things’, ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’? Man, Rodgers and Hammerstein really socked it over the fence with this one, didn’t they? How many of you can look at the title and start to sing the song? I bet a lot of you can. C’mon, don’t lie to me! 
I remember as a 6th grader blubbering like a baby when Christopher Plummer choked up on stage when he started to sing Edelweiss and Julie Andrews and the rest of the family kicked in to save the song in front of the crowd. As a 6th grader with my brothers next to me I was fighting like a madman not to weep but I just couldn’t help it. Sadly, that nasty habit still is with me when I watch movies like that...even the dolphins make me cry. Yup…I’m pretty pathetic, aren’t I?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g84dejrJXI
Anyhow, here’s an elevation map showing the last mountain I must climb:
I am going to try to go from Lexington VA to Charlottesville VA, which will be a 70 mile ride. On the map above, right in the middle of the map you'll see a very light label for the Maury River. That is the location for Lexington. I'll be going through the town of Vesuvius (how appropriate) during my 2000 ft climb. Once at the top, the route will follow the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 20 miles. Then I exit the Parkway, come down off the Blue Ridge, and after that it's a slide into home plate!
Wish us luck!