DAY 12 FRIDAY THE 13TH

The Fog comes / on little cat feet / It sits looking over / harbor and city / on silent haunches / and then moves / on

Carl Sandburg

Left the motel and pulled up to the ranger station to enter the Skyline Drive, she said be careful there’s some fog on the mountain. Started up the mountain and almost immediately entered thick fog, didn’t see another vehicle for the first 20 minutes. Continued to drive thinking it would improve but it never did you could see the yellow line and a few feet to either side of the road. I was second in line just following a taillight and a vague outline thinking that the only thing that would make this worse would be no yellow line when we hit a construction area and the yellow disappeared! Twenty-five miles in found a small store and inquired about the fastest way off the mountain, ten miles later we headed down out of the fog. I’ve heard the view is incredible but I’ll have to trust the pictures on the web site for that judgment.

The highway we took off the skyline drive was 33 and we just stayed on it, never a road we intended to ride but what a great two lane road. It lead us west into West Virginia up and over the Shenandoah mountains thru small towns and a ski resort before meeting up with the interstate. We got on I- 79 north to put on a few miles before the day was over, stopped for the night in Bridgeport WV. We are across the street from a 960 acre FBI compound that is home to their computer networks bedding down in a new Holiday Inn with a badly needed hot tub.

After lunch today we put on raingear for the second time this trip, it had rained hard while we ate. Headed out on 33 in a light rain which ended in a few minutes, took the gear off and packed it back up at the next stop, our luck continued one more day.

Todays route map: http://goo.gl/maps/MtyK