Red Bush, KY to Beattyville, KY
Wow! Slept late. 7 AM. No cars, trains, no barking dogs! Good night sleep for a change. Rain never came after all. Starry night. Quiet. Morning fog very thick - so thick I couldn’t see the lake 100 feet away!
Left lake at 9:20 AM. Had tea and spaghetti and meatballs for breakfast. One challenge this morning was retrieving my Tupperware from a trash bin with a metal door, kind of like a mailbox. Luckily, I could open the door part way and see my Tupperware container at the bottom. The Tupperware container is very important to me because it is 6” square, very shallow, and fits perfectly into my handlebar bag. I put leftovers in it and trailmix from time to time. Anyway, last night as I was emptying it into this trash bin, it slipped out of my hand and fell down to the bottom. This morning, I am leaving late because it took me a half hour to figure out how to fish it out. First I tried duct-taping a clothespin to the end of a tent pole and forcing it around the lip of the container. That failed. Eventually I duct-taped my Swiss army knife (with a blade exposed) to the tent pole and just stabbed the dang thang. Yahoo - got it! Not really that hard!
Well, off to West Liberty, KY and lunch and an ATM machine. This was a good place to stop for the night - thanks to those two guys who told me about it. I can still see their sweaty faces as they stood there in the late afternoon sun.
12:30 Stopped at the top of a long hill. Three construction workers were sitting in a truck and offered me some water. It was in a cooler on the back of their pick-up and it was ice cold. Wow - what concept - COLD water! They said they saw me pedal up that hill and thought I could use it. I told them where I was going and told them how earlier I held a tobacco leaf in my hand for the first time. The leaf was light green and about 18 inches long and 10 inches wide. Doesn’t smell like tobacco at all. Seems so innocent - hard to believe what a poison it can become. The locals said that some disease is affecting the crop and they have to cut it down early. How interesting... a disease causing plant plagued by a disease... OK, down off my anti-tobacco horse... I thanked the construction workers for the water and they said I was “just a holler” from West Liberty - all downhill - yeah!
Quick stop at library to cool off and update “Where’s Jasper?” Quick call home, too. Then on down Rte. 460 - or should I say UP - long climb out of town. And then finally - it did something for the first time on this trip - it RAINED! I pulled under some roadside business to get the rain covers out. Thunder and lightning, driving rain. Turned into a drizzle after about 20 minutes and I started riding on. Let me say it was welcome rain - Kentucky Rain - (Didn’t Elvis sing a song about that?) Cool ride the next 15 miles. Then the sun came out and it got warm again, or should I say agin.
Gotta do another 25 miles today to make Berea by noon tomorrow - post office - General Delivery Mail - Saturday hours only until noon - closed Sunday!
72.42 miles today. 6 hrs. 32 min. actual bike time. 792.0 total
Took a picture of some horses and bluegrass. The horses took off just as I pressed the shutter button. Oh well. Tried to make Irvine, KY but came up way short. I’m near Mt. Olive, KY. Two miles down a 7 mile hill. Camping in a big field. Lots of crickets. Up early and on the road quickly tomorrow. 48 miles to Berea still. Good night.