Upon arriving in Charlottesville, we were greeted by my friend Dawn from Harrisonburg, VA, who drove an hour to be our first and only sag wagon, bringing delicious pasta and chicken dishes from a local Italian restaurant, wonderful desserts, and a few tiny goodies for Jamie. It was so nice to share dinner with a dear friend.

We’d called a local youth hostel in Charlottesville last night looking for a place to sleep, but they wouldn’t accommodate Petunia, so they referred us to another house-share type place that was really close to our route. We stayed with hosts Flame and Raven in a room in their home called FairHaven and it was very comfortable and nice! Here’s Flame, Greg, Tunes and one of her paintings behind them.

They even let us share their organic fruit, home-grown strawberries, and breakfast supplies. We slept in til 8:30 and cooked amazing berry-banana pancakes this morning. We didn’t get on the road until after noon, but it was nice to have a slow day after 2 weeks of daily riding. Tunes was happy for some R&R too.

We passed some beautiful views of the mountains that we’re headed toward. Trying not to psych ourselves out too much for the steep elevation gains headed our way this week.

We thought we might push on to Afton tonight and see the trail-famous Cookie Lady (2.0) and her cyclist memorabilia center, but we had hot dogs in Crozet instead, and were invited to camp out for free at their fire department. We did some much-needed laundry by filling a pannier with soapy water and washing clothes by hand and hanging our things on a rope tied between two trailers in a field. Hopefully it’ll drip almost-dry by morning. We called it an early night in hopes of having enough energy to tackle the climbs tomorrow.