Our Adventure Vacation, Part 2

Okay, so maybe I was a little dramatic in the previous post. 

The truth is, our three-day bicycle tour of the Skyline Drive was really, really tough. There were times when we were absolutely miserable. But there were also spectacular, really fun times. And now that I am a few days post-adventure, I can say that it was a good trip for us and definitely worth the effort (although we agreed that we would do everything in our power NOT to plan such a crazy trip again!)

Anyway, here is a photo from the first day, I think it is at about mile 3.

We came to the first overlook a little further up the mountain. Our house is down there somewhere!

The second day was a special gift from God to us. We had a low-key morning, and we didn't hit the road until around 11am. We had spent the night at the Skyland Lodge, which was also the highest point on the entire Skyline Drive:

Here I am, freezing and exhausted as we arrived at the Lodge the night before, just as the sun was setting

Here I am the next morning, a little bit more rested and sort of ready to start our second day

We were pleasantly surprised with a much more relaxed bike ride that day also. Within a couple hours, we had already reached our destination for lunch: Big Meadows.

They served us food, and we saw many other cyclists that day. I enjoyed sitting there, but I was also so tired that I could have fallen asleep at the table. I pretty much did.

We enjoyed having the time and good enough weather to stop and explore the overlooks. Our favorite one had a little stone staircase that led to a short hike with a beautiful view:

I asked Ellis not to get my nerdy, "sweatpants tucked into men's hiking socks" look in the frame of this picture. I guess he missed that memo.

It felt really awesome when we saw all of the super stylish cyclists in their professional looking outfits ride past us!

Not long later, we arrived at our campsite at Lewis Mountain:

It turned out that my back wheel had a warped tire on it, which had made my ride a little more difficult than it needed to be. Ellis spent a long time replacing the tire and fixing my wheel for me at the campsite. It was just one of the many ways that he took really good care of me on the trip. 

He also made a really great fire for me, which we ended up being very thankful for the next morning!

The weather report was calling for rain, wind, and bad storms the next day. At one point, I was loading gear into the tent when a wave of dread and foreboding suddenly washed over me.

We had enjoyed a wonderful day, but I was so exhausted and so afraid of what the next day might bring. We were going to have to cover even more miles than ever, and the weather was predicted to be even worse than what we had battled the day before.

I walked up the long path to the camp store on the other side of the campground, and the heavy darkness seemed to grow worse around my heart. I realized I needed the Lord, and I called out to Him for help. I began saying some verses from Psalm 19 - the first passage of scripture that came to my mind - and I felt my heart change immediately. The tone of the trip changed for me in that moment, as I knew that I would need to be thinking truthfully about God and focusing my heart on Him to get through the rest of our adventure well.

That evening the temperature dropped dramatically as we crawled into our tent and huddled together in our sleeping bags for warmth. I was so tired, but I remember thinking about a few lines from the Hymn that we sang at our wedding, Great is Thy Faithfulness:

"Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow," and, "morning by morning, new mercies I see."

I am realizing that I have struggled greatly for much of life with terrible anxiety about "tomorrow." God has been teaching me to focus my thoughts on Him and what is true, and excellent and good about hard changes or events in the future instead of being paralyzed with dread (or ignoring the difficult or painful challenge, which is the other thing I am good at doing). Believe it or not, it actually makes a huge difference to start thanking God for what you know to be true about Him in the midst of confusing or scary times.

So, before I nodded off that night in the tent, I told God that I knew that tomorrow was probably going to be really hard, but that I would be looking for Him and His provision, and that I was trusting that whatever happened was okay because it was from Him.

Little did I know how much I would need that preparation in my heart to face the challenges that lay ahead for us on our last day!