On Saturday morning we set off to climb up to the Blue Ridge Parkway… a day I had been dreading since we started planning this trip. We climbed up a series of steep switchbacks into Afton, VA, then up a little farther onto the Parkway. This was when we realized the Adventure Cycling maps from Nick (a fellow cyclist who had hosted us a few nights earlier—he was so helpful!) were dated 1997—and were not completely accurate. There used to be a food option at Rockfish Gap where you get on the Parkway, and now there’s not. We had planned most of our day around being able to eat out when we got on the Parkway, and getting groceries when we got off that evening in Vesuvius. But now we were in trouble, with 27 miles of climbs ahead and just enough bread and PB for one round of sandwiches. And we were already hungry. But we decided to save our big food stop and press on to the visitor center at Humpback Rocks. We were holding our breath for some kind of vending machine or something there.

When we got to Humpback Rocks (6 miles of almost all climbing), we stopped in the bathroom first. When I came out, I saw a crowd of guys standing around Dave and staring at our bikes.

“We were just saying to one another, these must be two real men,” they had just said to Dave when he came out of the bathroom.

“In fact, one of them is a real woman,” Dave said. Just then, I emerged from the ladies’ room.

These guys were clearly in awe of how much gear was on our bikes. They were on a supported tour themselves from Front Royal to Cherokee. But they had a van that carried all their gear (and most likely were staying in hotels). They were on an off day, getting ready to set out on a day hike on the AT. They ranged in age from a young guy (late 20s) to a few older men (late 50s to 60s).

They took some time to ask some common questions—where we were headed, how much our gear weighs, how much mileage we would do each day. A few of them took turns trying to lift Dave’s bike and even mine. One of them said to the other, “Next time you talk about wanting to put your extra water bottle in the van, I’m going to remind you about these guys.”

We talked for a bit, and Dave and I mentioned that we weren’t doing the whole Parkway because of the difficulty of getting food, which we were hoping to find soon. They started asking… “Do you need food? We have some stuff in the van.” One guy mentioned that he had an extra loaf of bread we could have. I said, “No, it’s OK, we don’t really need the bread as much as we need peanut butter.”

He started going on and on about this huge thing of PB he had that wasn’t the kind he liked anyway, and, the next thing we knew, they were coming over, one by one, carrying loads of food—granola bars, Clif bars, Gatorade gels, peanut butter, bread. They had boxes and bags and insisted on loading us up. We were kind of laughing, trying to not take too much, but they were eager and were clearly enjoying giving us tons of food. So we took it! What amazing provision! Better than a grocery stop! They joked around about not giving us too much, since we had to carry it all, but then joked about how much room we had since we had so much stuff on our bikes anyway.

We were unspeakably grateful. In fact, as they took off for their hike, we sat down right away and made sandwiches and ate enough to tide us over for most of the 27 miles we had on the Parkway. The Lord has been so good to provide for our every need!

This might not look like a whole lot, but that bag is full of Clif bars and Power Bars. We got three full boxes of granola bars. Also, the huge jar of peanut butter is not pictured here!