Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Day 38 (7/30): Booneville, KY --> Elkhorn City, KY (125 miles)

Days mileage: 125 miles

Another early start with using my headlamp as means of telling me where to turn and so on. More tiring Kentucky terrain with the goal in mind that I'd get as close to the Virginia border as possible.

The day started relatively cool again with fog haning around between the peaks of mountains....seeming to be a pattern here with Kentucky mornings. Anyways, the day was pretty uneventful for the most part. Just more and more small Kentucky towns that were really run down and seeming to be deprived of all factors of life...yet somehow life still seemed to rumage around such neck of the woods.

My official "Kentucky Dog Count" reached 46 by days end. Luckily none of my extremities were still intact.

Ummm....what else...oh yes..how could I forget....near the end of the day I had two big climbs that have, by far, been the steepest climbs I've ever had to scramble up....it made the Ozarks seem pretty tame all and all. Toss the humidity into the picture....toss on some small country road with twists and turns around nearly every turn...and the terrain of eastern Kentucky...and voila! The steepest two climbs of the trip.

I rolled into Elkhorn City and was satisfied that I still had 1.5 hours of daylight left and taht I was only 4 miles or so from the Virginia state line. I chatted wtih a local for 40 minutes or so about bikes, my travels, his travels, the winding/twisting roads that lay ahead of me tomorrow...etc.

I pitched my tent underneath a bridge next to a small, quiet mountain river. Too tired to cast out a line so i Just sat and watched as some smallmouth bass broke the water's surface with attempts in swallowing the lingering bugs.

Thunder clambered and echoed off nearby mountains as I slowly drifted off...a few bolts of lightnign lit up the sky every now and then..nothing to worry about seein it was a good ways off.

No comments: