Oldmarrieds: Weekend trip: VA Creeper Trail

Last weekend we decided to take a spontaneous road trip to mountain bike in Virgina. When we purchased our bikes last June I did a ton of online research looking for trails that we could do together. I came across the Virgina Creeper Trail early on and bookmarked it. I hadn't thought much about it since until Paul randomly "IMed" me last Tuesday asking if I wanted to go. I jumped at the idea and immediately located the nearest Hampton Inn (where we could use his points to stay free), the weather forecast, reviews of the trail and printed out a plethora of maps. A HUGE bonus in our travel to Abingdon, VA (where the trail ends and where we'd be staying) was its proximity to Becky-lu! We couldn't have asked for a more fun and adventurous weekend!

Some pictures of Abingdon (a cute town! established in the 1770s)

Martha Washington Inn

Hills and cows - hills and cows - quite the bucolic scene!

Quick rundown on the VA Creeper Trail:
-"VA's premier mountain biking experience"
-The former rail bed passes through the back country of Southwest Virginia
-The last Virginia Creeper train ran in 1977
-33.4 miles long from Whitetop to Abingdon, VA (another 1.1 miles run to the VA/NC boarder)
-There are 47 trestles on the trail (some really, really, really high and long)
-The first 10 miles are downhill and fast! The last 10 miles are brutal (uphill nonstop)! The middle 10 are nice and scenic.
-Nice maps of the Trail
-We "cheated," like most others do, and took a shuttle from Abingdon to the top. However, we did not get the shuttle ride back from Damascus like many do - we wanted to do the whole thing. Looking back, I could have lived without those last few miles... but it was beautiful!

To see Paul's cool Garmin GPS/Heart rate/cadence monitor thingie - go here. You can see the map of our trip, the elevation change and if you have "Internet Explorer and Adobe SVG Viewer" you can see a neat map in motion.

Here's our day in photos... the day started off cloudy, cool, windy and threatened rain!

At the top, starting our trip at 1:30pm
Whitetop Station (restored in 2000)

Trail head & menacing clouds

Paul along the trail with the river on the left

Me at the Damascus trestle (one of the last 'iron trestles')

Resting in Damascus (where most people get picked up) - the Appalachian Trail runs through town, a pretty interesting place.

Cows grazing at old homestead along the river

Me on the Trail (which runs parallel with Hwy 58)

Another bucolic scene (hills and cows... hills and cows)

Map of the Trail we'd completed thus far (with Paul's reflection)

Quick break and hot dogs at Grandma Mom's in Alavardo (Paul chillin' on the porch)

Trestle over South Houlston Lake

Detail of the old trestle

Almost back to Abingdon (starting to get really tired!), it didn't help we had a short downpour of fat rain

I survived 33.4 miles! Back in Abingdon at 5:45pm - we had dinner reservations at 6pm! ACK! (thanks for your patience Becky-lu!)

On our way out the next day we checked out the route again and took a few more pictures of the drive.
At the Abingdon trail head (where we ended our ride the day before)