Fun Stuff

LOL

These were on a menu which also served as a guide to local slang:  

Barn art.  Someday I will learn how to take electric lines outa my pics.

From the Road

The country side began to look different after Berea.  While still quite hilly it is not mountainous like before and we see a lot more farms.  The roads are still narrow and shoulderless though.  Here are some pics of what we see these days:

Ken gives me fresh flowers every day.  :)

Some People We Met

We are meeting so many great folks on this trip...  in fact, that is one of our favorite parts of riding cross country.  Here are a few of them:

The guy in the red sweatshirt is Andy, and he used to be Joaquina's pastor until he decided to write full time.  He and Rob (behind him) live in a community that we find very interesting.  They use solar energy, catch their water in a cistern, and have composting toilets!  We picked their brains awhile and if the rain hadn't really gotten bad we might have stayed longer.  This is what it looked like when we left their place:

Yikes!  This is the creek we had to drive through when we left.  Mom and Joaquina were really tense, but my Dad did a great job and I wasn't worried.

The guy in the cart is Joe, and he owns the campground where my parents stayed.  He is a liver recipient and says we can stay at his campground any time we want.  :)  He has some incredible stories about his illness and transplant history.  He was only on the waiting list for a couple of days!  Wow!  The woman with him is Charlotte Wong from Donate Life Kentucky.  She came to give us some shirts and when she learned about Joe she got to talk to him about becoming a spokesperson and it worked!  :)  I love it!

All of us getting new shirts and meeting Charlotte, who of course....

...rode my trike!!  She told me not to tell Jenny Miller Jones that she said this, but she said, and these are her words...  "nah nah nah nah naaah nah.  I got to ride Jen's trike and you didn't."

On Sunday we went to the Methodist Church with my parents and heard one of the most amazing sermons I have ever heard.  So brave and honest.   Whew.  A little girl named Isabel got up and read some scripture and sang a little song.  I shared it on FB if you'd like to see it..  Her father is Alfredo Escobar, a local artist and he and his wife Jennifer invited us to dinner at his house.  There was quite a group there as you can see:

Bill and Rose, Jennifer's parents.  Bill took us to their farm, Happiness Hills Farm.  They have done so much with this place including remodeling the old tobacco barn.  Wonderful place.  Wonderful people!

Check out Alfredo's artwork here:  Alfredo Escobar and check out Jennifer's music here: Jennifer Rose Escobar

Berea - Parents and Joaquina

My parents had waited long enough so we had them come pick us up and give us a ride into Berea.  Here are some pictures of Galen and Karen.  It is so nice to have them with us now!!!

Us at Dooley's Diner.

This is what my Dad looks like from the back seat.  I got car sick and moved to the front seat shortly after this pic was taken.  Ken and I both got car sick just about every time we rode around town.  I guess we aren't used to riding in cars anymore!

Uh oh.  Guess who NEEDS a TerraTrike now...

Meet Joaquina!!!  She and I were friends in High School and had not seen each other since.  She and her husband Brent and daughter Brianna live in Richmond, just a short distance from Berea and we sure appreciate her putting us up, (aka putting up with us) for 5 days.  She was an exceptional hostess and even made us cheesecake from scratch!  Thanks Joaqunia!  We miss you already!

Joaquina DuBois.  What a beautiful name for a beautiful person!

Of course she rode my trike!

So did Brianna, Joaquina's 14 year old daughter.  NICE girl!  Very artistic, and musically inclined as well.  My mom taught both mother and daughter some dulcimer songs while they waited for us to arrive.

We went out to eat several times.  These gyros were the best.  Hi Victoria!

At the Main Street Coffee Shop in Berea.  Yum!  I love the painting behind us too.

Joaquina's dog Mozart did great with our grouchy little Simon.  :)

Our goodbye hug.  Awwww....

A Good Map

My friend Russ from Durham completed the TransAm portion of the ride last year and was kind enough to get me this map.  I hope it helps those of you following us to keep better track of where we are.  Thanks Russ!

This map does not include our Pacific Coast or the Western Express portion of our ride, but it should help keep you current of our whereabouts for at least the next several months.

A Time of Rest

I just wanted to let you all know that we did not fall off the face of the earth somewhere near Buckhorn Lake State Park.  We were in Berea, KY, resting and running around with my parents, and with a dear friend of mine from High School.  Joaquina and I hadn't seen each other in many years but it was as though time had not passed at all.  Well, except during our morning conversations where we caught up on the many adventures we'd both had during that time.  I will write more about her and her lovely little family when I blog about Berea.

I will try to blog this weekend sometime.  There are SO MANY pictures and so much fun stuff to tell you about - I won't know where to start!

Stay tuned....

Buckhorn Lake State Park

After one of the hardest days of the trip so far (and we've been out here 6 weeks now) we landed at a beautiful state park called Buckhorn Lake.  The campground is small but the sites are well maintained, shady, and are right on the river.  The prices here are good too, only $12 for primitive sites and $20 for one with hookups.

Our TerraTrikes under a tarp?  Or the Batmobile?

Simon says...

These are everywhere, especially crossing the road. I think they must be the ones that turn into the yellow Flutterbys we see since there are so many of them.  I didn't know their little hairs were so long until I captured this one with the Macro.

Hindman

When we got to Hindman we couldn't find a place to stay. There was a place downtown called The Quiltmaker Inn that I had read about in my Bike Across the US book, but it wasn't open so we went to the Forget Me Not Floral shop next door and met Pat.  She told us the only other motel in town was closed too, and she worked really hard to find us a place to rest our weary bones.  It wasn't easy!

Me and Pat.  You can't see them in this picture but she has wings and a halo.

Wanda and Rebecca who run the Dorm at the Settlement School in Hindman.  There is a lot of very interesting history about this school.  To read about it, click here:  Settlement School  We stayed there for a $25 donation, so if anyone plans on passing through there on their way down the TAT, we recommend it.  This is the Dorm:

We had the entire place to ourselves and got a great night's sleep.  We were getting a little stressed out since we weren't at all sure where we'd end up for the night.  What a great place to end up!

The first couple of hours after we left there were very pleasant riding.  Rural roads, minimal traffic, and the terrain was rolling and fairly easy to ride on.  Once we hit Hwy 80 though, it went downhill fast.  Well, we went uphill, but the experience went downhill.  It was terrible.  4 lanes of coal truck traffic, rumble bumps, debris and trash on the shoulders and long, long hills.  I don't know why this portion of the TransAm Trail hasn't been changed.  A local told us there was an easier, safer, and much shorter way, but we followed the maps and had a miserable experience.  The drivers were not as nice as we'd been seeing up to this point either.  

Coal lying on the edge of the road.  

Finally we got off of route 80 and 15 and onto 28 and that road was better.  We still had about 20 more HILLY miles to do after riding in all the heavy traffic and we were stressed.  Then a bus load of kids went by and we got mooned.  Nice.

On a lighter note - I found some more little buddies to ride with me!  

And it looks like our speed has really increased:

(?)  WHAT?  (?)

Pikeville

We spent three whole days at the Riverside Inn in Pikeville and when we left the owner of the motel, Gobel, gave us a ride back to the route, and then he refused to let us out until he took us to the top of the mountain! We rode the remaining 33 miles to Hindman through some curvy roads with very limited visibility, some less than friendly drivers, and rumble bumps on the skinny shoulders.

Getting into civilization again we had terrible traffic to deal with for a long time.  The roads were covered with coal and garbage and we went up LONG hills with traffic so loud we couldn't talk to each other.