Monday, 3 November: With some difficulty, I left my friend's house and headed west, toward Shenandoah. I'm not in quite the best riding shape after my lazy month off, but am certainly better off than when I started the trip back in May.
I stopped in a national park for lunch, and a kindly ranger who also happens to be into cycling stopped by to chat. I picked his brains about my upcoming camping options, since it had become clear to me that I had grossly underestimated the distance to my intended camping spot. My options were poor, and I steered the subject around to stealth camping possibilities, not specifically for tonight, but for when I'm riding through Shenandoah, since most of the official campgrounds have just closed for the winter. Once we had discussed this a bit, and I said the magic words ("leave no trace"), he offered to let me stay in the picnic area of the park. Given the choice between riding a half day and camping for free or riding really hard until dark and paying money to camp, I went with the former. Now that I am headed south, and am really not that far from Alabama, I'm not feeling the need to push myself too hard. Besides, I don't want to end up in the sorry state I was in when I arrived in Virginia a month ago. I took him up on his offer, and am now lounging in a beautiful meadow surrounded by trees. I have a covered picnic area and pit toilets, and the ranger will lock the gate at sundown. There is no water here, but the kind ranger offered to fill up my bottles for me. He returned with an extra gallon on top of that, so now I don't even have to think about conserving water! Wooo!
Also, it was a little bit sunny.
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