We had a great tour of Colonial Williamsburg yesterday. Our feet were certainly tired by the end of the day but it was well worth it. Attendance seemed very light so it was easy to get into all of the houses and the weather was just beautiful.
We parked in the Visitor Center again this morning, this time to start our ride down the Colonial Parkway to Yorktown; about 13 miles. It seemed much busier today. The parking lot was filling up around us as we got ready to ride. There are some tricky turns out of the Visitor Center to get to Colonial Parkway and we had to do a sudden stop at one and bam, down we went. Must have been quite a sight! A huge amount of old people body slammed right onto the pavement! As promised, here are some graphic injury photos
There were clearly no really serious injuries so we hopped back on and got underway. We were both nervous and not terribly slick at the next few stops but we smoothed out as the ride progressed. Here’s a few pictures to give you a feel for the parkway. It’s a beautiful road and drivers are generally courteous.
Pearl was happy to find a bike rack in a nice shady spot at the Yorktown Visitor Center.
The ranger that sold us our tickets was quite a gregarious guy and very happy to tell us all about biking around Yorktown. He pulled out a map and as he was highlighting the dangerous bits on the roads he said “oh yes, we did kill one out on the Colonial Parkway. Wheel got stuck in a pavement groove and he broke his neck”. Then he went on telling us about how we would be just fine on these roads in Yorktown but casually mentioned that they had in fact lost a few cyclists at one of the really bad intersections. You can imagine the effect this had after the morning crash! We realized too that this would all add up to some crazy mileage on a day reaching the upper 80s so we opted to stroll around Yorktown and then just bike back to Williamsburg.
Main street is blocked to cars and a very nice walk. We had a good lunch on the riverwalk which was very popular today and then took the trolley back to the visitor center. I was very happy to see that they had a good understanding of the proper way to eat fries! Highlight of the day though, at least for me, was see the start of the TransAmerica trail in Yorktown. This is the spot where people dip either rear or front wheel in the water as they finish or end their journey across the country. Will that be us one day?
Traffic was heavy and fast on the ride back. I guess the Parkway is used by commuters although it must have been a fairly early shift of something getting out. Tom was hurting by the time we arrived and we think he’s bruised a rib or two which makes getting the bike on the car rather difficult so we’ll just do our Jamestown touring by car tomorrow and hopefully that will also give us time for the Art Museums in Williamsburg which have folk art and a quilt exhibit.