QUICK STATS

We're pretty sure the two nights in the hotel spoiled us. We both woke up tired only had oatmeal to eat for breakfast this morning. No more fresh waffles for us! At least we had some granola from my mom to put in the oatmeal. That made things a little bit better!

After we got up and around, it was off to the post office for our second mail stop! Since we had just seen my family, we didn't expect anything from them, but we had a few people mention that they were interested in sending us things, so we were hopeful that we still had some mail.

Unfortunately, it seems that nobody sent mail to this particular stop. Oh well... there's always next time.

We figured we had two days of riding to get to Berea, where we would be meeting up with Evan. That meant taking a bit more direct route than the map showed. So I looked at the map, picked a route and we were off...into the 30-something degree headwind! Brrr!

By the time we got to our first meal break we were solidly in the middle of nowhere. We found a driveway and tried to set up the bike tee-pee like we had earlier in the trip. There was a bit of a slant to the driveway, but we got it to work. Or so we thought.

As we sat down in the grass, one of the velcro bands holding the bikes together snapped and the bikes fell over! Oops!

We righted the bikes, reset the tee-pee, and ate our lunch. This time everything held. After we ate, April tried to see if she could use the bathroom, but whoever lived there merely looked out their living room window and then ignored the door. I guess April was too scary in her safety vest and helmet.

A little ways up the road we found another house and tried again. This time, someone answered the door and, after some thought, let us in. While April was using the bathroom, the lady told me she didn't normally let strangers into her house, but we looked "harmful enough"! Uh, hopefully she meant "harmless"...or maybe that's why the first house never answered their door...

Both of us seemed to be dragging today. We think it was a combination of two days in a plush hotel, the headwind, and seeing family, which made us thing of home and made it harder to concentrate on what we needed to do. Pretty much we just wanted to stop and go to bed.

But we couldn't. We had to press on and get to Berea so we could meet Evan on Wednesday! So instead, we stopped at a coffee/computer repair shop. Yeah, it's a bit of a weird combination. They also sold prepaid cell phones. Whatever works, I guess.

The lady behind the counter somehow took our discussing what we wanted to share as being two separate orders, so instead of one coffee, we got two of the exact same thing. Oh well, we could probably use the extra pick-me-up today.

The wind continued to slow our progress and we soon realized we wouldn't be making the 70 or 80 miles we had hoped for. I also realized I had read the map wrong and rather than picking the most direct route, I had picked a slightly less direct route. That means tomorrow will have to be a big day! Bummer.

As we closed in on our destination, Bardstown, KY, we came across the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park. It was neat, except that we couldn't figure out where it was that he might have been born. There were several old-looking buildings. As the sun crept lower, we decided that it had to be the smallest, lowliest, looking building. However, upon reading the signboard, we learned that Lincoln was not in fact born in any of these buildings. Instead, it was his "earliest recollection". And we still weren't entirely sure if we had the right building. We took a picture anyway.

When we reached Bardstown, the only campground was part of My Old Kentucky Home State Park. So that's where we went. After some confusion about the signs marking the tent camping area, we got the tent set up, had some dinner, and headed for the bathrooms to get ready for bed.

The bathrooms were in the RV section of the campground, and we also quickly realized that, while the tent sites were totally buried in leaves, the RV sites were pristine and totally leaf free. In fact, judging by the wall of leaves that divided the two, it appeared that they dumped the leaves from the RV sites into the tent sites. But then again, you'd have to be crazy to tent camp in Kentucky in November, right?

We pretty much just huddled in the tent, and blogged, and read for the rest of the night. April discovered some bug bites on her stomach. They look a lot like chigger bites to me. We'll have to keep an eye on them over the next couple of days and see if any more appear.

Well, now it's time for bed. Here's hoping tomorrow is a better day! Thanks for reading!

Share this post