And on and on.....

Sunday August 9

We celebrated this day by getting up, packing up, mounting up, and pedaling away. That’s up, up, up and away! This would have all been accomplished by 9:00. Our intent was to hit the restaurant that we had passed on our way to the horse camp, but we changed our mind and just pedaled on. For reasons too numerous to mention, I’m going to pretty much eliminate this day. It never happened. Well, it happened, but I’m not going to give you every single detail.

We left the horse camp near Eddyville and rode until we stopped for an early lunch at an all you can eat restaurant in Elizabethtown. Later we took a ferry ride that transported us from Illinois to Kentucky. Photo. This would have been the Ohio River we crossed. Once crossing into Kentucky we found ourselves in Amish country. It was Sunday so all of the Amish business places were closed. They take a lot of pride in whatever they do and keep such a clean appearance at their business enterprises. We witnessed a young Amish man in his Sunday best riding down a big hill on a quality made Amish wagon which was evidenced by his surviving the ride down the hill. He had to have been going 25 or 30 mph in a childs wagon, albeit one made with attention to detail. He was dragging his feet on the pavement in order to slow down enough to make a turn onto the road that we were resting alongside of. I was so hoping Donna would get a picture of this young man to go with the journal but she just stood there too amazed to think about pulling the camera out and snapping a picture. We had an argument about that later on which led to me being in charge of photography now as well as documentation. When will I ever learn that Donna just doesn’t make mistakes?

This would be a short day for us as we have plans to stop tomorrow at a special destination that all cyclists talk about. So our day ends when we pull into Marion Kentucky. This was a hot humid but short ride of 50 miles. Once in Marion, we attempted to stay at a bed and breakfast but they had no vacancies. Next we tried a low budget motel on the opposite end of town. The guy running the place came out with a ridiculous price of $80 plus tax for a room. The place was almost empty. I told him that I had to discuss the price with my wife and left him to reconsider. When I didn’t return he figured out that the price was a bit high since we were chec king in after 6:00 and would be leaving in the morning. He was not very good at dickering as I told him I would be willing to pay 40 to 50 for a room. He dropped his price down to 65 plus tax and I said 50. Eventually he dropped to 50 but then got angry when Donna asked about non-smoking. He then walked back inside and we decided that he had a bad attitude.We then located the city park which also held all of the city’s ball fields. Our camp was set up next to a ball diamond adjacent to the skate park. Free! We were without showers once again but had a bathroom at our disposal so we made do as all good cyclists can. Our tent this evening was utilized without the rain fly as this allowed plenty of air flow through the tent. Before removing the fly, it was stifling hot inside the tent with all 3 of us inside it. We all felt the difference and were able to almost instantly fall asleep even though the temperature remained in the middle 70’s.