Day 28. Marion to Eddyville.

This is a beaver dam. I waited for the beavers to show up. but I think they were camera shy.

Me and Lisa at the Louise and Clark sign. We;re pointing west.

This sign explains it better that I ever could.

The cave in the rock entrance.

Inside the cave in the rock.

The cave in the rock again.

That's Lisa, this shows you how big this thing is.

Aboard the ferry to Illinois.

Waiting our turn for the crossing.

Off loading vehicles coming from Illinois.

I thought this snake was alive. After this shot, I poked it with a stick. It was dead.

Lisa, I had to make sure she was alright.

There whe is again. She was like that all night.

That's us, we were the only tourist in the whole town.

This sign was right across our camp for tonight.

This is it. Home sweet home.

We made it out of Kentucky alive. So long you miserable dogs.

The road is long. Isn't there a song like that?

Our cabin at the Meyers B3d & Breakfast.

Down town Marion.




Day 28, Marion to Eddyville. Illinois Her We Come! 48.17 miles.

This morning, I went to thank Mr. Meyers again for his most gracious hospitality. I can not begin to tell you what a relief it was to have a place to stay for the night, let alone one so nice as The Meyers B & B. I met his wife for the first time as I offered to help her unload the trunk of the car which had a few large items in it. I would say the Meyers were both in their mid to late 70’s, and I could tell just by talking to them, that they just loved helping people. Molokai has yet to see better people than these.

We went over to McDonalds for breakfast, and noticed that there were only old people in there. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but Lisa has an eye for these things. She notices people, and what they are doing. From now on I’d better be careful, or I might blow my cover………… We walked back over to the B & B. While doing so, I had my I-touch on, to see if I could get and unlocked wifi signal so I could check my e-mail. There were a few locked ones that showed up, but no unlocked. Bummer, I’ll have to wait at least till tomorrow.

We loaded up our stuff, and headed down the road. We are only 10 or 12 miles from the Ohio River which separates Kentucky from Illinois. We were doing pretty good, but then it started raining. It didn’t look good. The sky was dark, and the roads were wet. We expected the worse. A lady passing by saw us on the side of the road studying our map and stopped. “You all ready to get wet?” She asked. “It’s supposed to be like this all week.” She said. “Good luck, and stay dry.” And she was on her way. This didn’t help our spirit at all, but we continued on, knowing we didn’t have any other option anyway. We reached the river just as the ferry approached with a load of vehicles from the other side. We waited till the boat man signaled us to come aboard. Lisa and I was the only two passengers aboard for the crossing. Josh, the boat man. Offered to take our picture as we were crossing. We talked for a few minutes, and found out that he was relatives with most of the folks in the town of Cave In Rock The town just on the Illinois side of the Ohio River. Cave In Rock got it’s name from this huge cave on the river’s edge that pirates used to hide out in, and ambush people crossing the river back in the old days. Louise & Clark actually had an encounter with these low life’s and taught them a lesson or two. We stopped at the cave and went inside. It is huge, and Lisa said that bats live in there.

Since it was a short day today as far as mileage goes, we dallied around a bit, not realizing that the Illinois side of the river was the hilliest since Virginia. There were hills. Lots of them. Big ones, small ones, and medium sized ones. Some of them steep. I didn’t let that bother me, since most of my training for this trip was centered in hilly country anyway. I looked at those hills and new they couldn’t hurt me. In fact, I think I laughed at a couple of um. We stopped for lunch at Elizabethtown. A small community that hosts an event called Hog Madness. Or something like that. In two days (Wednesday), there will be more than ten thousand motorcycle riders from all over the country converging on this little town. Am I glad I’m not going to be here for that one. Can you imagine thousands of beer drinking, tattoo toting, drug educing vagrants all communing in the same place at the same time? There’s also some big cult rock band that I never heard of that is going to be playing there with body piercing groupies and devil music galore blasting through the air. They would probably hang the both of us for wearing lycra……….. After lunch, we noticed that the roads were dry, and the sky even looked brighter. By mid afternoon, it was sunny and hot. The humidity was at least a hundred and fifty per cent. I was sweating liquid as fast as I could take it in.

We pulled into Eddyville at a little after 4:00PM. The camp site was still another 2 miles or so down in the valley. As we were headed there, Lisa noticed a sign that read, “Hays Canyon Camp Ground. 1 mile. On a different road. “Wanna go there?” She asked. “Sure, why not?” I replied. So that how we ended up here. The manager was not in, so we made our selves at home in one of the camp sites, hoping they are not going to kick us out when they get back. We’ve had good luck so far, The Lord takes good care of us. Hopefully tonight won’t rain, and that we get a good nights rest. We do over 60 miles tomorrow, and take a rest day in Carbondale. A town of about 20,000 people. They have three bike shops there, and we are hoping to have our bikes serviced there.

Thank you all for your support. Your prayers are working, and The Good Lord is watching over us every day. Aloha, Ted.