We made it!

We reached the East Coast! Thirty-five hundred miles traveled across the U.S. of A.!

This update is a little overdue...imagine that. Heidi and I arrived in Yorktown last Wednesday; however, we were without internet access for a few days, and now we're separated from each other, and so it took us a few days to consult about how to update the blog. After looking at the blog, I see we haven't posted since the day we biked to Willis United Methodist Church near Glendale.

The most interesting thing about the church, which hosts bicyclists on the TransAmerica route, is that the sanctuary was a field hospital during the Civil War. I believe during the Seven Days Battles, which was a week of fighting around Richmond. If I understand correctly, in the battle nearest the church (the Battle of Malvern Hill) over 5,000 Confederate soldiers died. Three-thousand Union soldiers also died. Actually, I was just reading about the Battle of Malvern Hill on wikipedia.com (an online encyclopedia) to check my facts, and, in fact, Willis Church where we stayed is mentioned in the write-up about the battle. One Confederate commander commented, "It wasn't war. It was murder." Considering the historical information, it was a little unnerving to sleep there.

For an entire day prior to reaching the church, we had passed sign after sign discussing various skirmishes in the seven days of fighting around Richmond. Heidi and I aren't too keen on the technical maneuverings of battles, so we didn't stop to read most of them. I find the human stories of war more interesting. For example, General Robert E. Lee did not support the secession of the southern states and would have supported the Union, except that he was so loyal to his native state of Virginia that when it seceded from the Union, he became the commander of its troops. Interesting, huh?

The day we left Willis Church we biked to a campground along the Chickahominy River. It wasn't a long day of biking--perhaps 35-40 miles on relatively FLAT ground. In the afternoon it started to drizzle, which was turning into rain by the time we biked across the River and arrived at the campground. It cost $23 to pitch a tent, and, to add insult to injury, they informed us that their water potentially was not safe for human consumption..."And would we be interested in buying some water?" No!

We were thankful, though, that the deserted campground had a big picnic shelter with lighting, and so we were able to survive the rainy, blustery evening and night in style. As for the water...we boiled and iodized our own.

Wednesday we awoke for our last day on the road! We were filled with complicated emotions: excitement, sadness, anticipation. We took photos of ourselves with our bikes before we set off for the day. The rain had dissipated by morning, and so although it was overcast, the weather was good for riding: the humidity took the chill off the air and we could ride in shorts and t-shirts.

The route took us along the James River, and past a long line of old plantations lining the river. Perhaps twenty in all. Every few miles we would pass another sign, and sometimes we passed multiple places within the same mile. It was interesting to see what is, to the modern eye, such close proximity between the plantations. I'd always imagined them being 10-20 miles from the nearest neighbor...not so!

We stopped in at the Shirley Plantation, which has been in the same family since the 1600s. It is also the home where Robert E. Lee's mother grew up. The stop-in took longer than we expected, because the home was several miles off-route, including a mile or so on a rough gravel road. The jarring of the road made me feel almost as if I were arriving in a carriage. A huge power plant across the river from the home spewed a cloud of smoke into the sky, detracting from the idyllic scene.

We soon arrived in Williamsburg, which has a large colonial reenactment village, based in the 1700s. Heidi and I couldn't really afford the tour. But we could ride our bikes on the streets and check out the various houses and governmental buildings that date back to that time period, while dodging horse-drawn carriages, the subsequent piles of droppings, and other tourists.

From Williamsburg we took the Colonial Parkway (a road connecting Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown) to Yorktown. As we passed under towering trees and beside marshlands, it became easier to imagine the life of the colonists who had arrived hundreds of years earlier. So many of them, and probably many of the tribes as well, had no idea of the scope of the continent they were living on. Most of them probably never saw beyond the swampy land along the Chesapeake.

And, at long last, we arrived in Yorktown, the final stop on our map! We dipped our front wheels in the York River as soon as we arrived in town, officially completing our long journey from coast to coast. (The stickler in me has to include the fact that I was disappointed to discover, a few days from the end, that the TransAm maps don't actually desposit one at the Atlantic. The York River opens into the Chesapeake Bay, which then opens onto the Atlantic.)

With sandy bikes, we went back up the hill to the Grace Episcopal Church bike hostel, a house overlooking the wide mouth of the York River and, in the distance, the Chesapeake Bay. Soon after we settled in at the lovely house (nicer than any hotel or hostel we've seen), our friends Bill and Joyce from Newport News, Virginia, arrived to take us out to dinner. We'd met them at an R.V. park in Baker City, Oregon, while they were on vacation, and they'd told us to call them when we got to the East Coast. It was really great celebrate with friends!

And thus ends our cross-country journey! Heidi is now staying with her sister, bro-in-law, and nephews near Washington, D.C., and I am staying with my sister and my bro-in-law in Baltimore. We'll probably be posting more photos and a few more reflections on the journey. Thanks for reading!