Day 62 – Pikeville, KY to Thunder River Campground, Haysi, VA

10/12/2026

Today’s route began as a choice, either 39.2 miles, 4,360 ft of elevation gain and 9% unpaved or 46.7 miles, 3,975 ft of elevation gain and all paved. The group decided to do the shorter route as it looked more interesting. Rolf was driving the truck, John, Greg, & Mark cycled.

The initial ride was beautiful with some strenuous uphill segments and some smooth downhills. The road had little shoulder, but traffic was light and drivers were courteous. We then turned off the state road on to a the first road heading toward gravel.

Road to nowhere

The road was newly paved and smooth and there was essentially no traffic. Then came the gravel, a rut road, which eventually appeared to be seldomly used. It ended in a steep uphill we had to walk and into an area with a gas pipeline station and no way out. Both John and Mark bushwacked where the road was supposed to go, but neither could find a way out.

More Halloween decor

We backtracked to the highway and continued on to the next town (Elkhorn City) where we knew we could pick the route back up.

The second area of gravel was much more straightforward but had some big hills. John & Greg took that route. Mark chose the longer route and encountered a 9-mile uphill segment, fortunately there were some brief episodes of flat & downhill along that 9-mile stretch.  

And we entered our final state – Virginia – our 10^th state, plus 2 Canadian provinces.

Along that 9-mile stretch Mark ran into an evil Great Pyrenees. The dog came out from a driveway barking and came right up to his bike. Mark yelled and it circled around behind and then came up and bit him on his butt, tearing his bike shorts and giving him two big canine tooth scrapes down his left buttock. He got off his bike, yelled at the dog, who backed off and did not attack again.

All the cyclists made it to the Thunder River Campground in Haysi, VA. Mark then took off for the clinic in Haysi, found they could not evaluate him or treat him adequately and referred him to the hospital emergency department in Clintwood, VA. He was seen by the emergency doc and given some antibiotics and started on the post-dog-bite rabies treatment consisting of Rabies Immune Globulin and a rabies vaccination. He will need additional rabies vaccinations over the next month.