A picture of the Streisels, my hosts from the last post.

After a breakfast at the Streisels, I was off again. The weather was misty and spittering as I began, but it was supposed to clear up. The road was as bad as Mr. Streisel said it would be. I wouldn't suggest US 50 to any other biker. The early part of the day was probably my worst experience of the trip so far. The mist that was everywhere left me cold and completely soaked. I'd push my bike up one side of a mountain or hill, roasting all the way while stopping to let any large vehicles pass (there wasn't any room to ride here), then I would zip down the far side, shivering and freezing for that whole part. At Mount Storm, visibility was down to about 75 meters due to the fog, and I was legitimately concerned about safety and feeling very discouraged about the trip. Then I started down.

As soon as I lost a few hundred feet of elevation, I broke through the bottom of the fog layer and the temperature started to rise. Pretty soon I even had some sunlight. After passing through the southwestern tip of Maryland, I hit Cathedral park and Aurora, WV. The area was beautiful, probably the nicest of my trip so far. It's funny how fast things can go for terrible to great!

The big redeeming quality of US 50 is that throughout that entire region, traffic was almost nonexistent, a great change. I ended up camping out a tiny distance after Fellowsville, WV. It had gotten dark, and finding a flat spot to camp was proving very challenging, so I just headed down a side road a ways and set up camp. 4 or 5 cars went by in the morning, making me wonder what they thought of the strange guy and his tent in the middle of nowhere.

I'm in Grafton now, typing this up. Today I plan to head through Clarksburg to get on the North Bend rail trail. I'll be happy to get a break from mountains for a bit. With my arrival at Grafton, I think I've pretty much dealt with the majority of the Appalachians. Rail trails never have a grade of more than 2 1/2 degrees, so it will hopefully be a relaxing ride with no traffic worries.

Three more days and I will hopefully be in Athens, Ohio to visit the sister! Depending on how I feel, I might end up spending an extra day there recovering from aches and giving my body a chance to do some mending. It's good to be ahead of schedule.