There was not a lot of services along our route today. We need to start carrying more food/water. We did not have a shortage of "up" however. Jeesh. I guess we are in the thick of the Adirondacks now. We did 3000 ft of climbing today.

Katie woke up with something wrong with her eye. We tried treating it as an allergy since that seemed the likely cause. Her eye was all puffy and swollen. Later on, she started describing it more like a scratch than itchiness, so we assume she got some sand in it and scratched her eye up (Golden Beach Sand maybe?). The only cure for that is time. We had to clean her eye out good, and then put a patch over her eye for half the day, while it healed. Later in the day she was able to ride without the patch, and by nightfall she was entirely better.

We had another really expensive and tiny lunch today. That seems to be a trend here.

After some very rough roads, with crumbling shoulders and lanes, things improved. We stopped at a fruit stand and a bar for snacks. This definitely turned our day around. Afterwards we climbed Blue Ridge Road; it was pretty darn awesome. Oddly, we had been dreading this road on the topo map, but it was not bad at all. Traffic was low, scenery was great, road was smooth. It was our 2nd day in a row with a headwind though, that kinda stinks. The road included a lot of climbing, but it was rewarded at the end by a 1000ft drop to our campground. Fun!

The roads were bad enough that even the cars understood why we were all over the road. Usually we would get yelled at for that. When a nice older lady asked me how our ride was going, I said it was "Great, but the roads are probably smoother in Baghdad". She replied, " just drive down the middle of the road, the other cyclists do. it is smoother."

At the campground, we were given a great spot near the showers, on a grassy patch overlooking the valley. The sound of the nearby waterfall was surprisingly loud, even though we couldn't quite see it from our tents.

Laura and Katie quickly got out their tent to find it was full of earwigs. Ewwwww. They didn't have them in it when they camped the night before, so they must have crawled in while the tent was drying on a picnic table earlier that morning. Strange.

A few minutes after arriving, we met Rob, Sheri, and Leah. They were camping nearby, and invited us over for Smores! Yum! We made our Spaghetti dinner as fast as possible so we could share treats with our new neighbors. We gave Leah a few travel towels to play with, and went stayed up too late chatting. Thank you for the great time guys!

Great day, but our legs are hurting. We need a rest.