Day 66-Roanoke, day off

It was a good start to the day because most of us decided to skip crew chief breakfast and went down the street to Waffle House to get breakfast instead which was amazing. After breakfast we packed up for the hike and headed to the mall for a little. I am giving a gag gift to Dean, we are doing it secret santa style so I found some awesome old man stuff at Spencer’s in the mall, I got him a cup that says “Old Man Drink” a fake old man driver’s license and a book titled “Sex After 40” and when you open up the book every page is blank. Can’t wait to give it to him. We headed straight to the hike after we ate lunch so we would have enough time to get to the top. It was not too bad of a hike, definitely a lot of elevation gain but it was a nice trail. Ryan, Hayden Wiles and I ended up taking off ahead of the bigger group, we didn’t know how long it would take us and were not going to let the time constraint keep us from getting to the top so we ended up getting to the top 10 minutes before the other guys and hung out and took some pictures. It was an incredible view, 270 degree view of the Appalachians and we could see the mountains rolling on all the way into the horizon, definitely one of the best views I have seen, it will be a very memorable one.

After we got back from the hike we had time to jump in the shower before heading to our friendship visit with Camp Easter Seals just outside Roanoke. This week the camp was for kids with visual impairment, many of them had Albinism and are able to see ok but have night blindness, some had no vision or some kind of impairment. We showed up and got a tour of the camp, this camp is also one the Build America visits every year and a couple guys on the team, Agerton and Wiles, had been to while on BAM and built some of the things they showed us, they also knew the director, some staff and a few of the campers. We ate dinner with the camp and then did their evening activity with them which was called Get Messy. It was exactly how it sounded, they had a counselor Sunday station, dumping all kinds of things on the counselors, paint fight and water fight. I was not too interested in getting messy at first and hung out with a kid, Paul, who was also avoiding the mess. I finally caved and ended up joining the water fight and got paint splattered on my face, it was a lot of fun. Before I left I hung out with Paul again who was sitting by himself. He has been going to the camp for 5 years and loves it, he said he loves the food and his favorite part is going canoeing, he was really cool. Everyone on the team was a mess, shaving cream and paint and chocolate syrup all over, it was great, we had to rinse off and most guys took their shirts off to keep the vans from getting covered in our mess.

Tomorrow we are back on the bike and I am very excited. We have 75 miles to Lynchburg and I am hoping we are still riding through the same beautiful scenery.