Day 9: Wytheville VA to Radford VA

After a rest day at the beautiful Bolling Wilson Hotel, we were ready & raring to get back at it this morning.  Nothing too exciting for me yesterday.  A walk around town, some bike cleaning, reading, internet surfing, dinner (at the one open small restaurant in town!), and that was about it - truly a rest day and I didn't mind at all after the 3 previous big days.  Also - it rained a few times, so not much motivated to be out and about.  In addition to the nice front porch the hotel had a lovely rooftop patio.  A nice idea but the weather wasn't really cooperating.  

We found out that the woman who went home the previous day indeed has fractured ribs, so a good decision to discontinue her ride.   

Today's ride didn't look toooo challenging, so a later start; a bit after 9:30.  It was really a beautiful ride all day.  Fall is starting to come to VA.  Leaves falling throughout each day and some on the trees starting to turn colour.  Cooler mornings and evenings.  Roads and drivers were good today.  The ride was pretty much entirely through rural territory.  The word "pastoral" came to mind a few times.  Just a few small towns that really didn't have any services available to us.  We stayed on Bike Route 76 just about the whole day.  And the best part - a tailwind all day!  We didn't have any really big climbs, but all the little ones added up to over 3000 feet.   

Some views..............

Off and on through the day we were riding close to a more major highway (Highway 81)which generally meant that the zoom-zoom cars were on the Interstate, making our route quite quiet.  I particularly liked riding through Pulaski County, with their bicycle friendly signage. 

Shortly after entering Pulaski County we had our first SAG stop.  MP found a great spot in front of a rural Presbyterian Church.  No sooner had she pulled in than the pastor was out to greet her and offer us the use of their restrooms, water resupply, etc.  

On the far side of Draper we passed this lovely little winery.  

Then on to the little burg of Newbern.

There was a quite a large building housing a regional museum.  It was closed when I went by, but apparently a later group was seen by one of the volunteers so she hurried over to open it up for them.  Such kindness..... again.....   I just stopped to take a picture of some of the things behind the building.

For the first time on the trip we spent some time cycling by a sizable river; the New River.  In the hills of Kentucky and western Virginia we spent a lot of time in narrow valleys cycling beside rather small creeks.  

And then on into Radford.  It is a city of over 16,000 and the home of Radford University.  Rather than tangle with traffic we took a quiet route around the city to our hotel on the far side of town.  Did see this nice statue in front of the Public Library before we turned off onto a bike path through Wildwood Park, though.

What a great ride today; just perfect!  And - in to the hotel in lots of time to get laundry done.  

Stats for the day:

Distance:  44.87 miles / 72.21 km

Elevation (Garmin):  3374' up, 3670' down / 1028m up, 1119m down

Elevation (RWGPS):  1123m up, 1215m down

Weather:  14C - 22C.  Sunny all day, with a few scattered clouds in the afternoon.  A substantial tailwind all day.