Day 7

I spent a lot of time last night trying to plot out and divide up the remaining distance to Atlanta, so I didn't get started until 9:30. The hills hit early and hard, but I managed to make it to Richmond for an early lunch at a too-fancy place. I also made sure I was well-stocked with supplies since I didn't know how much civilization I would see today.

I took US 25 south out of Richmond, and then veered off on US 421. Finally there before me, I saw some REAL hills. All the hills I had gone up before were really "negative" hills: places where rivers had gouged valleys below the normal grade of the flat ground. Now suddenly I saw these large protrusions actually jutting up out of the flat ground, and some of them even had spots of fog on their slopes. At one point along US 421 there was a constant, steep, uphill grade that took me from 725 feet to 1500 feet. My altimeter has started acting crazy (maybe it was dropping it, or maybe I should put in the new battery), so sometimes it'll suddenly decide to add about 8000 feet to the climbing total. That's why I haven't had accurate results in the last few days. I would guess I did something like 4000-5000 feet of climbing though.

After a while I turned off the US highway onto a Kentucky state route (1912), which probably wasn't the greatest idea in the world. This was really getting into the country, with no real towns to speak of for miles. We're talking mobile homes with roosters and goats in the front yard, and dogs coming out to chase me from seemingly every other house. Lemme tell you, I felt a lot safer in Gary! Also, somewhere in there I missed a turn, and when you're in the mountains, missing a turn can be a huge deal. I was going down a really steep downhill at the time, so by the time I realized I'd missed it, there was no way I was turning around and going back up, and on top of that there are only so many routes in the area, and they tend to veer in different directions, which can really put you out of your way. So after taking some more of these roads, which made me go to my lowest gear for the first time, I made it back out to US 25, which I probably should have just taken the whole way. What was I really expecting to see at a place called "Big Hill" anyhow? At one point when I was feeling fairly frustrated, I stopped and got out the big bag of peanut M&M's I'd bought in Richmond. As I was opening the bag, it ripped way too far, and M&M's went flying all over the road. It was just like one of those Skittles commercials, where it's raining Skittles. Except that those are Skittles, not M&M's, and that's a joyous occasion, not a vicious stab to the heart. Oh well, it was a big bag of M&M's, so there are plenty left.

Speaking of rain, I rode through rain a couple times today. Nothing terribly heavy, but it was real rain, and nothing seemed to get wet. Just after getting back on US 25 was one of the times that it rained, but it was still a lot nicer than the state routes. Not much traffic (it kind of parallels I-75), and if the US Government is going to blast away massive volumes of rock for my convenience and that of my fellow travellers, I might as well take advantage of it, right? No such provisions were made on the state routes, so here the grades were much more tolerable.

As I approached London from the north, I felt something strange behind me, and it was making the bike go faster. Finally I figured out what it was: a tailwind! I'd almost forgotten what such a thing felt like. There was a really ominous storm sweeping across behind me, so that must have been shifting the winds around. In London I called ahead to the Levi Jackson State Park to make sure they had camping available, and they said they had six sites left. So I hustled the last six miles here, and considering that the other 143 sites in the campground are filled with RVs, I actually ended up with a spot much better than I had hoped for. And it has water and electrical hookups, exactly what I need! The state park is based around the "Wilderness Road", and after coming from Fort Boonsborough, it seems that my entire route today was almost exactly the route that Daniel Boone forged around 1775, which is kinda cool. Then again, pretty much everything in Kentucky seems to claim something Boone-related, so who knows? Either way, those guys sure had it a hell of a lot tougher than I do.