Warming up for the Appalachians

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We managed to leave the Walmart carpark at about 6:45am. It wasn't the best place to stay but the Walmart was open 24 hours so at least we had a toilet to use in the morning.
Today was scheduled to be fairly long at 126kms each. It will be our longest day before we finish with each of the following 3 days having less kilometres. Significant today was a number of steep climbs that was capped off with a 15km descent at the end of the day. We also crossed into Maryland today. The climbs were as advertised. One at 7kms and 6% and a second at 5kms and 8%. These we expected but it was the numerous other smaller climbs that really sapped the legs. We each climbed in the order of 2000 meters today which is a massive effort. When we crossed over to Maryland there was a detour on our route (Hwy 50). We decided after the river crossing and airport tarmac scramble that we should probably take notice of this one. We turned left and had no trouble getting back on to our route. While I was driving the lure of the garage sale was too frat for Jeff and Tom. They turned up to the RV with all manner of booty. Jeff bought a set of Health Scales, a cork screw and a compendium. Tom bout a knife block complete with knives, a pair of shorts with no button to do them up and a pretty pink bag to carry everything in. I still don't get it! Late on the day, with Jeff Dave and I finding we came to a corner. We all agreed we should turn left and we expected to see Tom waiting in about a kilometre. We went about 2kms and still no Tom. We decided to go back and check the other direction and just as we got to the corner Tom was back tracking from that direction. As it turned out Tom was actually right. Ts is significant as Tom usually has no idea which way we are going. The final descent was a lot of fun, but there was significant climbing required to earn it, what a shame I was in the RV for the climbing part. As I write this I still don't know where we are staying tonight. We're all exhausted. 3 days to go. Tomorrow we take on the Appalachian Mountains which will make today look easy. Wish us luck, we'll need it.

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