May 5th Charlottesville to Afton, VA

Inside cookie lady's "bike house, & water station below for passing bikers

Monticello, home of President Jefferson

We went to Monticello, Thomas Jeffersons home in the morning and did the whole tour there. By the time we got ready to take off riding it was already 1 pm, but we were planning a short mileage day so didn't think it would matter than much. Wrong. It started raining literally 5 minutes after we left town, and rained the duration of our ride. The ride was basically entirely uphill, and we missed a turn & ended up being on a busy highway for the better part of it. The end of the ride was up Afton Mt., which was a steep incline.

We stayed the night with June Curry, better known as "The Cookie Lady." In 1976 when Adventure Cycling first started the Transamerica route, June & her father offered water and cookies to some tired cyclists & since then she has been providing food & shelter. She lives in an old house on the top of the hill by herself, and there is a second house which is dedicated to housing cyclists and is filled with thousands of postcards she has received from people who have stayed with her and various other memorabilia. She was a really sweet old lady- she's 88!- who probably would have told us stories for days if we had the time.