The days have really started to blend into one. I often don’t know what day of the week it is or what day it is. Everyday is pretty much the same. Wake up, eat breakfast, break camp or where ever I am staying, load the bike, and start riding. Hopefully this all starts before 8 am. When I first started out in Oregon I was able to start some mornings shortly after 6 am, but as there is less and less sunlight and depending on where I am in a particular time zone I don’t want to be on the road before 7:30 am. This is because I am riding east and into the sun rise. There are too many blind corners and steep hills making it difficult to be seen even at the best of times. But add a sunrise into a driver’s eyes and it becomes even more dangerous.
Since I was a little off route in Elizabethtown I needed to get back on the route. In doing so I rode through Hodgenville, KY which is loaded with Abraham Lincoln memorabilia.
Abe was born in these parts and his birth place and boyhood home are memorialized near Hodgenville as National Parks. I didn’t see his birth place but tried to see the boyhood home. It was closed for renovations. To get back on route I went through a town called New Haven. It is not as nice as the New Haven that I lived in 35 years ago but appears to have an interesting train museum. The museum was closed when I got there so I could not explore it fully.
As I was approaching Loretta, KY I came across some multi-story, black, institutionalized buildings. At first I thought I was in the Soviet Union and Moscow Mitch allowed some of his friends in the state. Then I thought I thought was a prison. I have seen enough of those on this adventure. From the outside only. But, the windows were too big. It finally dawned on me that these might be somehow tied to either the whiskey industry on the pot industry. Probably whiskey since it is Kentucky.
I have finally realized that the bike route creators tried to make cyclists take the longest and hilliest route from point A to point B. I started to notice that the route sometimes goes off a main road onto side roads only to reconnect with the main road 15 miles later. There are few straight roads in Kentucky. Sometimes these side roads are really quaint with no traffic but incredibly steep hills.
I tried to outsmart the map creators and took a “short cut” along a somewhat busy road but a road with a 4 foot wide shoulder that I could ride on. It was the first shoulder that I could ride on in all of Kentucky. My “short cut” saved me time and the elevation increase was at a steady 1 to 1.5 percent grade increase instead of the steepest of the steep.
I really didn’t have a plan on where to stay this evening other than a camping spot 22 miles further east. It was getting too late in the day to try to make it on the windy and hilly roads so I settled for another cheap hotel. The best part of the hotel was the DQ in walking distance.
Today’s stats: total mileage 77.2 miles; average speed 12.7 mph; max speed 41.4 mph; elevation gain 3350 feet; elevation descent 3238 feet.