May 24- Elkin WV to Mansfield PA

What a beautiful day. West Virginia has some very remote, beautiful twisty smooth paved roads that glide through lush green valleys. The people seem not too well off here, but they live in a beautiful place. The place we stayed last night was a nice place, but was busted last year because someone set up a meth lab in one of the rooms. So it is not too popular and does not rent to anyone living nearby. So it was cheap and not crowded.
We headed east up over ridges and down into adjacent valleys. If you look at a topo map of this part of West Virginia and north into PA, it looks like someone (glaciers no doubt) scraped their fingernails in a curve down through here, leaving flat bottomed valleys divided by mountain ridges. There are not many people here so the roads are not busy and the towns are small and far between. Dave's GPS usually takes us on interesting excursions but today was a doozy. We spent an hour or 2 on a goat path over a mountain range, complete with washed out roads and lots of pretty good sized rocks and gravel. The only people up here were a few campers on 4-wheelers that looked pretty surprised these 700 lb road bikes were picking their way over these hills. Once back on terra-firma (asphalt), he set it to "fastest way" so we stayed on pavement the rest of the afternoon. The towns up here in rural PA as tiny so not much for motels. We hit some rain for a bit, donned our rain gear, and bolted for Mansfield, where here are lots of sleeping options. Quick dinner and straight to bed after wrestling those bikes on the dirt roads. Oh yea, we saw the most vivid rainbows (double no less) coming into Mansfield tonight. Wonderful day.