2 Long Days, One quick update

Well I will have to describe 2 days' worth of action tonight.  We got in so late yesterday that by the time we showered, washed our clothes, got dinner, and got back to the room at about 9:30.  Sorry, but on the scale of needs, I needed sleep more than I needed to document our travels.

So we started off yesterday, Saturday morning, from Berea, Kentucky, home of Berea University.  We had a really nice stay at the Historic Boone Tavern.  It is an old hotel, created in 1909 by the President and the wife of the President of the University at the time.  It's obviously called the Boone Tavern for Daniel Boone, but to me it was more interesting learning about the University itself.  Berea was founded in 1855 by abolitionists and was open to both sexes and all races.  They reach out to people who cannot afford college educations and have work programs to either erase or reduce the tuition.  They serve the people of the Appalachian region, stating that they draw 50% from Appalachia, and draw 50% TO Appalachia.  Most of the people who worked at the Tavern were students.  It was a really nice place, and the people were really wonderful to us.  

Jerry, leaving the Historic Boone Tavern Inn

We left as early as possible, right after sunup, knowing we were facing a very long day of 96 miles with a whole lot of hills.  We scooted down the road but found a small market on our way out of town.  They actually make breakfast sandwiches there, so we had 2 each.  We had a short conversation with a group of local fellas who hang out in front of the market, including a Junior Samples (look him up) look-alike who was entertaining all with his stories.  On we went.  The first place that we passed was a place called Big Hill, and it was aptly named because it came at the end of a big hill.  After going through there, the morning was really nice.  We were on some busier roads, but it being early Saturday morning, we didn't find much traffic.  We actually enjoyed some very good roads and some beautiful scenery.  We went through McKee, where we took a break, found some sandwiches, and then headed on to Booneville.  In Booneville we found a good little restaurant called the Bus Stop Diner (just like the day before), but this one was a whole lot faster and a great find.  We decided to eat a hot meal in a cool place as the day was quickly heating up. They had full dinners on the menu for lunch, and knowing what we would be facing the rest of the day, we had those and some chocolate shakes to top it off.  A good meal, and an enjoyable place.  Just like the market earlier in the day, they too had a story-teller, sitting around and spinning tales and bragging about whatever he had done.  I was reminded of the Twilight Zone episode where the guy who spun tales and lies about himself was abducted by aliens who didn't know he had been telling lies - they thought he was the smartest, bravest person on Earth.  He finally fought of the aliens and killed them, but when he tried to tell his friends, they of course laughed it off as another set of lies.  Yeah, that's what this guy sounded like.

Inside the Bus Stop.  The story-teller in overalls, right before being abducted by aliens

Out we went, heading out for the second half of the long day.  As we went forward, you could tell that we were heading from the relative prosperity of western and central Kentucky to the more remote, and much poorer sections of eastern Kentucky.  As we went on, you can see the evidence of the poverty in the amount of junk on the roads, and the amount of junk in the yards of the houses as we go.  Strangely, there are some very nice, very well-kept homes in every part of Kentucky we've visited, but it is just sad how little care that some of these homes would have for not only clean yards, but for the homes themselves.  As we traveled even closer to Hazard and coal country, you could see the farmland give way to more valleys and hollows, where the road snakes through the valley, and homes are built, quite often literally on top of each other.  Many times we could see a very nice house, with a mobile home set up in the back yard.  In these cramped places in eastern Kentucky, the wealthy and the poor live within feet of each other.  There are some areas where we saw a group of very nice and nicely kept homes, but within a yard or two away, there was likely an abandoned house or some other evidence of extreme poverty.  There were places where an old RV would be parked by the side of the road.  I mean parked as in it was parked a few years ago, and you could tell someone was living in it.  And I'm not talking about large trailers, but sometimes as small as pop up trailers or basically vans.  

As we traveled through this area, we were continually going up the side of a mountain and down the other side.  There didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason we would be traveling through a certain area, and up we would go, for a few miles, and down we would go again, for a few miles.  We were really getting bogged down in the second half of the day.  Despite our early departure, we seemed to be getting later and later in our projected arrival time into Hazard.  We were also adding stops, whenever we would find a convenience store, to get some sort of hydrating drink.  We were losing so much through sweat that we needed all of the replenishment we could get.  

We got to the top of one of the hills we were doing that day, and lo and behold there was an ice cream stop there.  It was very odd, as there was really no other buildings around, and this was not really a spot you would think would have ice cream treats, but there it was.  We stopped and got some cold drinks (root beer for me and Jerry had a root beer float - too much ice cream for me after the shake at lunch).  As we sat down, a young man riding his bike, obviously on the Trans-America trail (lots of bags ) stopped in.  He was so glad to see us and we sat down and talked about his and our trips. His name was Matteo.  He had started out in Washington DC about 14 days ago, went down to Yorktown and was following the trail westward.  What was really amazing is that until 2 months ago he had never owned a bike.  He bought a Trek 520, a good, general purpose bike, and then suddenly went on a cross-country adventure, by himself.  He looked to be a little more than college aged (?), and he had a trace of an accent, I can't tell where from, as if perhaps he was US-born but his parents were not.  He talked about some of the places he'd stayed at so far, and it seemed as if he were ad-libbing most of this.  Stealth camping, knocking on doors, etc.  That might work for a 20-something young man, but not for the dinosaurs.  We headed east, he headed west.

Matteo, the 20-something rider, out for (one of ) his first rides, across the country!

Finally, as we were approaching Hazard, within 10-15 miles, I finally felt like I was drained of most of the last of my energy.  We arrived in town pretty much dragging our tails.  Because I had been to Hazard way, way in the past, and didn't think the local places were going to offer much, we chose to use some friends and family connections (thanks Abby) and get a room at the Hampton Inn.  Unfortunately the only way there was up, up, up, on a major highway that was being repaired, so we were squeezed into one lane.  I think it was close to the most dangerous piece of road we've been on.  We got up the road, found a turn-off, and found the Hampton.  After scrolling through my phone in the lobby, we were able to get the reservation through Hilton and we were in.  Unfortunately, by this time it was about 7 in the evening.  By the time we got in, got showers, washed out our disgusting sweaty clothes, and went to the Applebee's next door, it was 9:30 and we were spent.  Another early day was in store for Sunday, so we called it a night.

Some of the huge coal-loading equipment used near Hazard

Saturday's numbers: 97 miles ridden, and about 8,700 feet climbed.  In 100 degree indexed heat.

Up again early Sunday, knowing we had another 90 miles to do, and another large bunch of climbing through the Appalachians.

We grabbed some quick munchies from the Hampton Inn reduced breakfast, including a bunch of coffee, and we were on our way.  Like the past few days, we knew that the key to getting this day accomplished was getting out early, like sun-up at 6:30.  We headed out the door, down through Hazard and out the other side.  We actually did get some quick miles in, logging about 20 before we took our first breaks.  We had gone through a number of really small towns, too small for even a convenience store, before coming upon Hindman.  This was a really nice, small town for eastern Kentucky.  They had a small college there, a number of brand new schools, was the county seat, so you could see why this was a little upscale for the area.  As we were heading out of town we spotted a convenience store, so we opted again for drinks.  As I was leaving Jerry spotted some masks for sale.  The day before my dinosaur mask had finally given up the ghost.  The straps failed and I needed a replacement.  I was using an old T-shirt mask Patty had used during chemotherapy, and it wasn't very tight or very good.  In any case there was a display with masks - they were Chinese made and they didn't even have English on the labels.  I took one to the register, and asked the guy behind the counter, (who wasn't wearing a mask despite state mandate) if he knew what size it was.  He had no idea.  Then he said, "I'll do you one better," and handed over a package of 5 new masks.  He said, "I'm supposed to give this to customers," but it was obvious that these were the first he'd ever given out.  It was a package of 5 re-usable masks from the Department of Health and Human Services.  He gave me two so I handed on over to Jerry.  If they weren't going to use them in Kentucky, we might as well put them to use.  

We continued on our way, which was actually a very nice route today.  The places where we rode were very beautiful, despite the appearance of a good many of the "homes" on the side of the road.  Just like yesterday we were struck by the juxtaposition of some very nice homes, very neat, settled next to, or very near, complete disasters.  Again we were stunned by the amount of discarded items that sat wherever they had made their last stand.  Cars, appliances, machinery, whatever thing that died was laid to rest wherever it had stopped working.  Still, the day seemed much more enjoyable than the hill climbing slog we had done yesterday.  Actually, what we found is that we were traveling along streams and through valleys, so the roads never rose or fell much.  However, we had 4 separate hills to do today, and each was whenever we would go from one valley to the next.  The route would take us on a pass that would go up and over, then deposit us in a new area.  The first such pass was a really steep climb, but the second was just long, without having too many steep sections.  The third and fourth, by the time the afternoon (and heat) had come, got harder.  However, we both felt much better concentrating all our efforts into 4 big climbs.

The top of climb #2.  Breath-taking view.  Really, I was out of breath 

A little redneck humor found on a garage today.  I think it sums it up well

We were planning to eat lunch in a place called Bevansville, but before we headed over the first pass for it, we found a convenience store in the middle of nowhere.  As always, we looked to get drinks; we saw that they could make sandwiches, so we ordered a couple and a couple of Cokes.  They let us eat at their employee lunch table, which was nice, so a sit-down lunch was had.  It's a good thing we did, because when we passed through Bevansville, there was nothing to be found.  

We finally got close to our finish, and went into the town of Elkhorn City, Kentucky.  We had seen that this was a little bit bigger town, so we thought we might get some dinner here before heading to the (Inter)State Park where we had planned to stay.  Elkhorn City offered little except a Subway (again!).  Knowing our plans for the next day, we quickly had sandwiches made for tomorrow, and left for the Interstate Park.  When we talked with Matteo he had mentioned the state park's lodges looked nice.  I didn't like the look of the only motel in town, the Gateway Inn, so we had booked a room.  They call it an Interstate Park, because it is run by both the states of Kentucky and Virginia.  It is officially about 2 miles inside Virginia (hooray, our final state!) but its land likely is composed from both states.  In any case it was located about 7 miles from Elkhorn City, and the map showed a little hill.  Surprise, it was 7 full miles of the steepest, and longest hill of the day.  Because we weren't expecting this one, and mostly because it was after a very long day, we suffered our way, inch by inch, up the side of the mountain.  And we went full up the mountain.  Breaks Interstate Park is basically the top of a mountain.  As we went up, in the full heat of the afternoon, my jersey and shorts just filled with sweat like they never have before.  It was as if I was trying to lose weight for wrestling back in high school.  At that time I ran around in plastic bags - this time I just climbed up a mountain.  When I finally pulled off my jersey it weighed about 10 pounds!  I'm not sure, but I would guess I could make weight for my high school team again after today.

Hooray, we've reached our final state!

As I said, Breaks Interstate Park is located in Virginia, close to the Kentucky border.  When I lived in Knoxville and my sales territory included KY and VA, I came to this area on a regular basis for more than 2 years.  I had never heard of this park, let alone visited it.  When we did arrive, after the sweat-soaked seven miles, we were quite surprised by how nice it was.  As is the case in most state parks, it is well kept and well run.  The room we have is a bit dated (they're doing renovations), as it opened in 1954, but clean.  They have WiFi, yay, and a restaurant, where Jerry and I replaced many, many lost calories from the day.  They even gave us the extra rolls from dinner to take back to the room, which 30 minutes after our feasts we started eating.  We have been to 3 state parks in technically 3 different states within the past week, and each turned out to be a good find.  Better than we had expected.  I don't know if there are state parks in Virginia between here and Richmond, but we'll be on the lookout.  

A long trip up the mountain and we finally got here

Today's numbers: we rode 91 miles, and climbed over 9,500 feet.  Tomorrow we plan to find our own way and leave the Adventure Cycling maps for a few days.  We hope to find some shorter, flatter routes to get to Christianburg, Virginia.  I'll let you know how it goes.