I found him, he was playing hide & seek with me, but eventually I found the little sucker, so he's had pride of place with a grandstand view of me nearly losing the bike in a river today & lots of lovely little back roads through Tennessee!
We set off around 7.30 this morning, leaving behind the lovely place we'd stayed at with a bit of regret, it was one of the nicest places we'd stayed since we've been over here. The Tellico Lodge, not cheap but worth the money, it has bike garages, cloths to wipe your bike down in the rooms & more in the garage... oh & the rooms are quite posh too with great showers... happy days!!
The first part of the morning was a quick lesson in river crossings, we had about 4, the 3rd being the trickiest, have a look at this GoPro vid we uploaded onto YouTube today, it shows the 2nd & 3rd from my bike, then a bit with Geoff getting soggy jeans... very funny but there is a bit of swearing I warn you now!!
Once through this section we alternated between little B road type lanes & fire tracks alongside the railway or a river. The day has been much easier than we expected but the upside is we've also covered more miles than we expected & we managed to check into another motel to recharge all the electrical gubbings & of course update you guys.
So we're staying in Lynchburg, the home of the Jack Daniels distillery, ironically this is a 'dry' state so you can't buy the stuff here at all, (bloody barmy rules over here about alcohol), you can buy beer from the petrol garage but not from a restaurant & you can't buy spirits in the state that has a distillery.... weird but hey ho!
We also had the worst food here so far, the BBQ cafe or something, the food was naff but the little lass who was our waitress was as friendly & helpful as everybody we've met here so far. Her family own the Lynchburg Chooper shop, which was a pretty cool place, I needed oil for my bike & this was the perfect excuse to go look in an iconic shop over here. We actually found it had a bunch of classic bikes inside, check out the pics below... little beauties they are too!
We've ridden past so many buildings today, the whole state is full of houses, they mostly have large chunks of land around them & you see loads of guys on various types of lawn mowers from little hand push things to the bigger mini tractor with a mower attachment on it. Americans must spent a fortune on mowers... even the road edges are mowed, a metre from the road edge it's wilderness & left to nature, but that first metre is immaculate...
The houses seem to vary from 50 foot long caravan type things to massive mansions with little estates around them, I guess it depends upon your income like everywhere else, but this seems to be a very well populated state. Some are proper rusty tin shacks, surrounded by rusty vehicles in various states of repair, others are immaculate with loads of trimmed little trees, statues etc...
The landscape has also changed a bit, from the volcanic rocks of the Blue Ridge range to the limestone of the various smaller ranges of hills we've passed through today, this affects the flora & fauna a lot, but its particularly evident in the tress with the species changing as you pass by. There are still a lot of trees & I guess that with the volume of rains we've been seeing it must be due to that good mix of warm sun & plentiful rains. Oh & we saw vultures feeding on road kill today too... bonkers!!
So we're at the 1100 mile mark since we set off from Baltimore, we have a very long way still to go, but its going well so far, admittedly the majority of this has been on roads & this iss something Geoff & I are both used to doing but we're feeling good so let's hope it stays this way...
:-) Have fun...
We set off around 7.30 this morning, leaving behind the lovely place we'd stayed at with a bit of regret, it was one of the nicest places we'd stayed since we've been over here. The Tellico Lodge, not cheap but worth the money, it has bike garages, cloths to wipe your bike down in the rooms & more in the garage... oh & the rooms are quite posh too with great showers... happy days!!
The first part of the morning was a quick lesson in river crossings, we had about 4, the 3rd being the trickiest, have a look at this GoPro vid we uploaded onto YouTube today, it shows the 2nd & 3rd from my bike, then a bit with Geoff getting soggy jeans... very funny but there is a bit of swearing I warn you now!!
Once through this section we alternated between little B road type lanes & fire tracks alongside the railway or a river. The day has been much easier than we expected but the upside is we've also covered more miles than we expected & we managed to check into another motel to recharge all the electrical gubbings & of course update you guys.
So we're staying in Lynchburg, the home of the Jack Daniels distillery, ironically this is a 'dry' state so you can't buy the stuff here at all, (bloody barmy rules over here about alcohol), you can buy beer from the petrol garage but not from a restaurant & you can't buy spirits in the state that has a distillery.... weird but hey ho!
We also had the worst food here so far, the BBQ cafe or something, the food was naff but the little lass who was our waitress was as friendly & helpful as everybody we've met here so far. Her family own the Lynchburg Chooper shop, which was a pretty cool place, I needed oil for my bike & this was the perfect excuse to go look in an iconic shop over here. We actually found it had a bunch of classic bikes inside, check out the pics below... little beauties they are too!
We've ridden past so many buildings today, the whole state is full of houses, they mostly have large chunks of land around them & you see loads of guys on various types of lawn mowers from little hand push things to the bigger mini tractor with a mower attachment on it. Americans must spent a fortune on mowers... even the road edges are mowed, a metre from the road edge it's wilderness & left to nature, but that first metre is immaculate...
The houses seem to vary from 50 foot long caravan type things to massive mansions with little estates around them, I guess it depends upon your income like everywhere else, but this seems to be a very well populated state. Some are proper rusty tin shacks, surrounded by rusty vehicles in various states of repair, others are immaculate with loads of trimmed little trees, statues etc...
The landscape has also changed a bit, from the volcanic rocks of the Blue Ridge range to the limestone of the various smaller ranges of hills we've passed through today, this affects the flora & fauna a lot, but its particularly evident in the tress with the species changing as you pass by. There are still a lot of trees & I guess that with the volume of rains we've been seeing it must be due to that good mix of warm sun & plentiful rains. Oh & we saw vultures feeding on road kill today too... bonkers!!
So we're at the 1100 mile mark since we set off from Baltimore, we have a very long way still to go, but its going well so far, admittedly the majority of this has been on roads & this iss something Geoff & I are both used to doing but we're feeling good so let's hope it stays this way...:-) Have fun...
