Day 18, Deep in K-9 country.

These are elk we saw along our route today. I think they were tame, they saw us and never even batted an eye.

I don't know how big these things get, but this one was almost as big as a horse.

We stopped here to use the rest room. It's a quaint little craft shop with all kinds of interesting things to do in there. We were the only ones in there, and the owner was more than happy to talk story.

An eye for an eye. She took one of me, and I took one of her.

This wall of shale was cut to make way for the Interstate. There are layers on coal in some of these. You could actually see them embedded in the walls.

The Adventure Cycling van passed us and pulled over to the side of the road to say hi. We were thrilled. These are the very guys that made the maps we are using for our trip.

Lisa talking with Dave of Adventure Cycling Association.

From the road, we could see the giant shovel loading a dump truck with coal to be transported to the rail cars for transportation to the factory.

This is a coal truck. If you see them, get out of the way, they have a schedule to meet.

Traveling on the Interstate, we try to stay as far to the right as possible.

Not too many new or big houses in these parts. This one must belong to a mine owner or somebody with money. Most folks here live in simple box type houses. Many of them one or two rooms.


Day 18, Melvin to Hazard, Ky. 52.25 miles.

So far, we have traveled a total of 703.6 miles. More than half of it in the mountains. I never dreamed Virginia would be so tough. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I never thought I would suffer as much as I did on a few of those long, relentless climbs. Those of you who never spent much time in your anaerobic zone, can not appreciate the depth in which the depleted muscles cry out for oxygen, and the burning of lactate acid invading the blood, robbing your ability to perform optimally under excruciating situations. Did any of you under stand that? Good, cause I didn't. Any way, it was tough, and i must say, Lisa is also tough. She may not be me, but she's tough.

This morning we got on the road a little earlier than usual. Partly because we didn't get much rest from all that was going on the previous night, and the fact that we just wanted to get the hell out of that place. There is nothing there, we couldn't even find a place to have breakfast. We had to go to a convenience store and by stuff to eat. We left Leigh and Margaret in hopes of meeting them later at Hazard, our destination for the evening.......... The rain started coming down again, and it was getting cold. It rained and it rained and it rained. I was soaked and wet from my toes to my nose. I thought I would never dry out. I put on my leg warmers, arm warmers, and wind breaker. It helped, and once we started the climbs, things started heating up real quick. The dogs were sparse today. I counted only about ten or twelve of them. mmostly little buggers that couldn't really keep up since we seem to meet these creature on the down hill run. The only ones that really scared me, was a black, medium sized dog that never barked till it was practically at my heals. i never even got the chance to reach for my pepper spray. But he turned out to be harmless. The other one was a dog named snowball. He came out of a yard that was full of trash, with the owners yelling his name at the top of their lungs. I wasn't sure if they were calling him to come back, or telling him to go get um. I wasn't hanging around to find out. Most of you know I'm fast, but when it comes to dogs, I'm faster.

We hit one of the steepest climbs in the morning right as the rain was starting to settle down. I would say this one had a grade of about 12%. (On one other blog I was reading, a gentleman said it was in the 18 to 25% grade. I'm sure there are more than one way of calculating difficulty of grade, but I was always told that a one to one, is 100%.) Lisa and I stopped twice on this near two mile climb. Both times to rest, and you know what. I was perspiring profusely. Faster than I could take in fluids. Good thing this was the only real bad climb today. The descents were mostly gradual and long. Following rivers and streams. Most of them so polluted, you wouldn't even want to go near them. There is just so much trash laying all over the place, that it is depressing. I just don't think people around here care. It's really sad. I asked Lisa if we were in the heart of the poorest part of our country. And she said yes. She also said that gradually we will see improvement as we get out of the Appellations and closer to the civilized part of Kentucky. I'm assuming the dogs are more civil also. At least that's what I hope.

Once out of the valleys, we entered I-80 again. What a rush! If you've never ridden you bicycle during rush hour on a busy freeway, then don't do it. It'll scare the skin right off of you. We stayed on I-80 for about 5 or 6 miles. I hugged the shoulder the whole way. A couple of times these large coal trucks would come zooming by just inches from the while line of the shoulder and created huge pressure waves that nearly blasted me off the pavement. i think they get a kick out of that. What else do you do when you get bored? Finally we made it into Hazard. This place is like a city compared to those little communities we just came out of. There is even a Walmart here. The first thing we did was stop at Arby's and ate the number 5 combo with fries.

Tonight we are at the Guest House Hotel where there is wifi. Thanks everybody, I wish I could show you all more pictures, I have hundreds of them, but that'll have to wait. Aloha, Ted.

Day 17, Kentucky Here We Come.

This is the same river that you saw in yesterday's entry. it snakes it's was through several counties, and we ran into it on at least three occasions.

The dead branch in the upper right hand corner of the picture is actually the center piece of this shot. I don't know how the rest of that junk got in there.

This guy is my Hero. He always seems to be taking some sort of risk, no mater how mundane the situation seems to be.

You see that? We had to climb that, and many more like it all day.

It's hard to see, but this is steep. the two people in the picture are actually walking the bikes.

This morning at the gorge.

A coal train was just getting ready to pull out when we crossed under it today.

Leigh in the front, Margaret, then Lisa. I'm getting pretty good at shooting while riding, wouldn't you say?

This is the Rainbow Dairy Bar. This is where we met up with Leigh and Margaret again. This place make the worlds best Hawaiian Flurry. I swear, I had one, and it was the best.

Road kill. There was a lot of them today. Wait a minute, that's Lisa, she must have pushed it a little too hard.

Finally, we are in Kentucky. Now we can play with the dogs.

The morning we left Breaks Interstate Park. It turned out to be a good morning.


Day 17, Breaks Interstate Park to Melvin. 45.3 miles.

Before I start, let me tell you that this was by far our hardest day. I don’t know what it was. Maybe we rested too much, or the sun might have gotten to us on the climbs. But it was a killer. We did three major climbs today. Two of them were over 3 miles and averaged about a 10% grade. We fell way short of our goal to reach Pipa Passes, still about 25 miles away. Although the weather did calm down somewhat, we were still in the questionable zone as far as afternoon thunder showers go.

We left the Interstate Park at about 9:00AM., after a hearty breakfast, and the threat of rain had passed. It was actually quite nice. The fog in the early morning was so thick, visibility once again was a major concern. By now it had cleared pretty much, and the temperature was quite comfortable. We didn’t even have to wear our jackets. After a short climb, we descended the next several miles down into the valley on the other side. We rode past small communities with names I can’t even remember, and dogs that would come rushing out every so often, but none was of any real threat so far. We are in Kentucky now, And it was evident by the change in the condition of the roads. Even the people here were a little different. This is the heart of coal country, where the lower class of our American society resides. Not all of them mind you, but the working class is predominantly employed by the coal minds. While we were taking a break at a gas station, Lisa pointed out that you can tell the people in these parts are poor. I asked her, “How do you know that?” She pointed at the fuel pumps. There were four of them. The final sale on these were any where from $2.00 to $6.00. I got to wondering, and told her that may be they just needed gas for the lawn mower. It’s hard for me to imagine that people are that bad off in this great country of ours. But it’s true. If not for this bicycle adventure, I would not have realized it so vividly.

As we rode on, we noticed trash everywhere along the side of the road. Even in yards, like people just didn’t care. I could have paid for my meals with the amount of bottles and cans laying around. Only one problem, they don’t have a recycling program here. Thus the litter every where. It is sad to see such beautiful country being treated this way. Even the streams were polluted. We passed one drive way, where it looked like the owner had dumped a couple of 50 gallon drums of trash, and left it. Pure speculation on our part mind you. There is probably a perfectly good reason why this was done. But since we only have three months to complete this journey, I didn’t bother to find out.

We met up with Leigh and Margaret from Alaska at a small road side snack stand. They were having their lunch. Since Lisa and I ate earlier, we opt. for some desert instead. I think Lisa got a chocolate flurry, and I got the Hawaiian. It hit the spot. I’m almost certain that they make um better here than on Molokai. After catching up on events, we teamed up with the two, and continued on. I figured maybe we could out number the dogs or something.

Once we began the climbs, reality set in. This was tough, It seems that some of these hills were steep, and would never end. A 10% grade rises 10 feet for every 100 feet traveled. These were at least that. I held up my water bottle on it’s side using it as a level, and aligned my eye along side it to a spot on the road further up the hill. I figured at my eye level, it is about five feet, and where I could see on the road, was about fifty feet. I know this because I shoot archery, and after a while, you get a pretty good sense of distance. Now, imagine over three miles of that on narrow, and winding mountain roads in the hot sun. Now, times that by two in a row, add rain coming down the other side, gusty side winds, with severe thunder and lightning in the evening while camping next to a gas station in an open field with no bathroom and no place to buy food for over a mile. You factor in the weird sounds coming from the streams and forest around us, and the fact that we found out that the guy that gave us permission to camp here in the first place didn’t even own the property. The real owner who lives next door was kind enough to let us stay once we found out the truth.

This is exactly the situation we are in right now. No wireless internet or cell phone signal. And now it just started raining real hard. The thunder and lightning is really bad. If I live through this, I’m going to thank The Lord and count my blessings twice. Good night everybody, I’m going to put on my I-pod and try to blank out. This is all too overwhelming for me.
PS: It’s morning now, but I just had to tell you guys. To add insult to injury, about 2 o’clock in the morning, a large dog came by and started barking real loud. For what seemed like hours. He was then joined by his buddy, and they both kept us up most of the night. Only when the heavy rains came did they quiet down, but started up again when it stopped. I don’t know if we’re going to make it today.

Day 16, A little R & R.

Displaying some off my artistic talent, I was able to capture the essence of what I thought was nothing

Upon deep, spiritual contemplation, I decided that the chicken came before the egg.

after hiking ovfer a half a mile opne way, we waited almost a half hour for the dumb train to come out of the tunnel. It never did.

We rode, then we walked. Tomorrow, we ride again.

This was one of the displays at the visitor center at the Breaks Interstate Park. We tried to get in, but it was locked.

According to the discription, this is an originale muskit. the horn holds the powder, the little cannister holds the primer, the oaked rag holds the lubes, lead bullet heads, the crimper forms the lead bullets, and the shoulder bag holds everything else.

The sign to the left of the still discribes how to make moon shine whiskey. Quite simple as I recall. But easier just to buy the darn thing.

We were standing on the levy that formed this man made lake. Two hiker4s came by just as I was ready to take this shot.

A couple of guests cruising the lake. upon closer inspection, I found that they were fishing.
This is the laundry room at the camp ground that we had to bike to with the risk of getting causght in the thunder showers.

They call this Chimney Rock. It is part of the large gorge fronting our room at the lodge.

Eriie morning and evening mist forms as the temperature of the land heat and cools. It's like a living entity as the fog rolls in and about, creating a visual spectical.

I shot this from our room at the top of the canyon wall.

The scene changes by the minute. I found myself taking a shot every few minutes as the fog created differant moods through out the morning.

I don't know what this bug was. It just looked differant that what we have back home.

These birds were flying in a flock, and hapened to land in front of me on this tree. It was quite far away, so I zoomed it in and cropped the shot.

Another one of the gorges moods, I spent olver a half hour mezmorized by the way the fog played for my visual sensation.


Day 16, Rest Day, Breaks Interstate Park. 3.5 miles, Laundry run.

There is a severe weather warning out for the area. They called for a 70% possibility of flooding and thunder showers starting at noon. Lisa and I weighed the options carefully, and decided it would be a good idea to call it a rest day and give the weather a chance to blow over. Tomorrow looks to be a better day. I was up at 5:30, and decided to catch up on the blog and e-mail. I looked outside, and I couldn’t see 20 feet. The clouds had settled in over night, and it was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Lisa was up at 7:30, she too did some catching up. At this point, we were not quite sure of our plans as of yet. We decided to got to breakfast, and see how things looked. At breakfast, we met Leigh who had walked in to find us. We asked him what their plans were. He said they were moving on in a bit. We then told them about the weather warning, and told them we might stay another day just to be safe. He became concerned about the situation also, and went back to confer with Margaret. Our concern was that once we leave Breaks Interstate Park, there is no real accommodations listed on the Adventure Cycling map. There were camp sites listed, but we didn’t want to have to struggle with setting up our tents in the rain, that would be miserable, not to mention the hazards of riding our bicycles in the rain with all those big rigs zipping by.

We never saw Leigh or Margaret the rest of the day, so I’m not sure if they decided on going ahead or not. After breakfast, we decided to do our laundry. That’s where the 3.5 miles came from. Riding our bikes with out having to pull the trailers was a real treat. It was actually fun. The laundry station is located at the camp site about a mile and a half into the woods. The air was heavy, and we knew we were taking a chance at being away from shelter for that long. Luckily it didn’t rain, and we made it back to the room with out a scratch. In fact, we even stopped by the visitor center to check out some of the history of this place. This area is where the infamous Hatfield and McCoy family feud took place. It all started over a stolen pig, and escalated into a full scale war between the two clans. It lasted over a hundred years, and became one of the bitterest feuds in American history. Today, there is an annual Hatfield and McCoy family reunion in which these two families get together as a token of forgiveness and friendship. What a lesson we can all learn from this. If somebody steals your pig, it’s better to just get another one.

The stormy weather never materialized, in fact, it never rained at all. The skies were cloudy and threatening, but all in all, it would have been safe to push on. The rest day did give us a chance to take in one of the hiking trails called : The Tunnel Look Out. A short hike, a little over a mile from our lodge round trip. The trail took us through thickly forested terrain to an over look with views of : The Towers, and Chimney Rock. There is a tunnel going through the mountain for trains to go through. Pretty neat. There are also these very large birds that soar throughout these valleys. I don’t quite know what they are, but they look like eagles. They have wing spans of at least 4 or 5 feet in length.

Well it’s shower time, and then off to dinner. Tomorrow is a 58 mile run into Pippa Passes, population 297. We are currently right on the boarder of Virginia and Kentucky. I Googled it, and it is way out there. Some of the poorest people in the county live in this area. And this is where the wild dogs of Kentucky start. Hopefully we will make it okay. We have our pepper spray handy, and I might even bring a stick with me. Please continue to keep us in prayer. Aloha, Ted.

day 15, Days of Thunder.

This is known as the Grand Canyon of the South. At the bottom is the Russell Fork
river. At over 600 feet deep, it is the deepest gorge east of the Mississippi.

Between thunders showers, the heat rising from the bottom caused these eerie clouds to form. Changing every minute. I must have taken over a dozen pictures of this phenomena.

The Russel Fork River at the bottom of the gorge.

At Lovers Leap, I took it to the edge and took this picture. That is straight down, over 300 feet.

I'm pointing to where I had my foot.

Lisa at the over look where she took my picture.

Lisa and her new friend. A box turtle we rescued from the hazards of the road.

This is the poor fella trying to cross the road.

These are those big trucks that come barreling down the highway at break neck speeds.

This is a close up of where we stayed for the night. Room 129, top floor, third room from the left.

This is Liegh and Margaret. Two touring cyclist we met today. They are from Alaska, doing the TransAm route also. They too got cought in the faul weather and are staying here.

This big boy is carrying a full load of coal up the near 10 per cent grade past where we were having lunch.


Day 15, Council to Breaks Interstate Park. 27 miles. Days of Thunder.

Aloha everyone. We made it as far as The Breaks Interstate Park. The climbing was horrendous today. According to the elevation profile on the map, Today’s climb should be the last of the big climbs for a while. We didn’t make it into Kentucky like we had hoped. The rain and threat of thunder made us decide to lodge for the night. We are in coal country now, and will be for the next few days. What this means, is that we will be encountering these huge coal trucks hauling buns up and down these narrow winding mountain roads with no shoulder. Sound dangerous? It is! How ever, we have a plan. When we hear these monsters coming, and you can hear them coming from afar, we will simply get off the road if possible. They are usually real good about giving us space, but around hair pin turns and on coming traffic, they tend to cut it pretty close.

We left the William P. Harris park in Council at about 7:30 this morning. We had a light breakfast and headed into Davenport for breakfast. I had the traditional biscuits and gravy with my meal. The weather looked like it would clear up, so we were in pretty high spirits. Leaving Davenport, we rode along more scenic country roads. It was nice being off the interstate. We made frequent stops to take pictures and to enjoys the shear beauty of this place. I can’t get over how green and thickly forested this entire region is. We saw this little box turtle trying to cross the road. So Lisa stopped and put it on the other side so it wouldn’t get run over like the ones we saw earlier flattened out on the road. There were a few dead snakes we saw, one of them pretty big. A few miles down the road, we stopped at a Subway to pick up something for lunch. It was only 10:00AM, but we weren’t sure if we would run into anything along the way before lunch.

Upon leaving Subway, we found a baby snapping turtle also trying to cross the road. This was cool. Two turtle rescues in one day. And the first time I’ve ever seen and held a real snapping turtle. We put that one across the street also before heading on. To our dismay, the climb turned vertical. It was steep enough to merit the granny ring. I am just guessing, but would say from personal experience, that this was easily a 10 to 12 percent grade. This kept up for over 3 miles. We would stop occasionally to take a breather and wipe the sweat out of our eyes. The humidity was unbearable. I never sweated so much in all my life. Since it was now noon, we decided to break for lunch right next to the guard rail on a steep section of climb. There was shade there, and enough room for those big rigs to pass with out making us feel uncomfortable. We watched as they geared down coming up the hill. By the time they passed us, they were only moving about 10 miles per hour with their full load. Once we were done, we jumped back on the bikes and methodically pumped our way to the top, not realizing that we were only about a quarter of a mile from there. We pulled over at a really neat over look called Lovers Leap. The story goes that two young Indian lovers who were forbidden to marry, took the leap of faith in protest. The over look was such a welcome break from all that climbing. As we were ready to leave. Three motor cycle riders came by and told us that there was a better spot just a couple of hundred feet away, so Lisa and I went over, and they were right. I got the pictures to prove it. While we were there, it started to rain, drizzle at first, then harder, and harder, thunder, lightning, the whole trip. I was getting kind of worried, so I offered a silent word of prayer as we waited for the rain to stop. With in about 15 minutes, it was safe enough to get on the bikes again, so we decided to push on. We reached the top within a few hundred feet, and noticed the weather was threatening again. To our delight, the Breaks Interstate Park entrance was right there to our left. We pulled in, asked the attendant if she know what the weather was going to be like. She didn’t, then we asked how much sto stay at the lodge. She didn’t know that either. Lisa and I had to make a decision as to weather or not to stay here, or push on another 8 mile and camp. No fun if the weather is going to be like this. So we paid the entry fee,$2.00 each, and went in. We made our way to the lodge and inquired about rooms. They told us that the Memorial Day visitors were all gone, and that they had rooms for $50.00 a night with eithernet internet access. We took them up on the offer, and was surprised at how nice these rooms are. We are on the edge of a gorge approximately 600 feet above the valley floor. There is a river down there, and we heard a train blowing it’s whistle earlier. I think we made the right decision, because it’s now pouring and thundering again.

Bye for now, I’m getting hungry. Aloha, Ted.