Day 0: Sherando Lake Campground to Roanoke | "Do you think we have more important things to talk about?!"

We just went down the internet rabbit hole on the final leg of our drive to Roanoke. Karen was wondering what the beautiful purple flowering tree is along the highways. Sharon asked Siri who was not helpful at all. Karen asked Google and got better information. We realized that neither of them were right and we had just spent 45 minutes going back and forth trying to figure out what this damn tree is! Karen finally said, “Do you think we might have more important things to talk about right now?!” 

After all, we are on our way to do 4 or 5 (or goodness help us, 6) days of bikepacking in the Appalachian Mountains of VA. Neither of us are fully packed or organized. And Sharon has never done this before, nor does she pack well to begin with. Now we're about to put everything we need on our bikes and ride them up and down mountains. Here we are, driving to Roanoke, wondering about purple flowering trees instead of planning for our 2:30 meet up with the shuttle up to Harrisonburg for the start of the ride! 

And as we're writing this, Karen is pulling over every half mile to optimize the photograph that we are going to post of this tree! This is going to be quite a week. Sounds great! Perfect. Oops, now I’m still talking into the damn phone! Where’s the button? Okay.

3 stops, 3 pictures. Beautiful purple flowering trees.

We looked for a park where we could yard-sale our stuff for the final organization attempt and found Wasena Park right near the shuttle launch point. After that, we headed over to Roanoke Mountain Adventures where Sharon bought a really nice hooded down puffy jacket for the trip on consignment. Our bikes were loaded and took the shuttle up to Harrisonburg where we spent the night at a local motel.