Day 14 Haysi, VA to Hindman, KY, 15 Hindman to Booneville, 16 Booneville to Berea

The Hilltop motel view...


Andy at the breaks...

Smooshed at the Breaks Interstate P.

As you might expect, we did finally make it up that Big "A" Mountain, (and the following day we saw it on a raised map at a state park, and it's name, definitely suits, even the church atop it included it in its title), and to Council, where we didn't stop for free camping, but decided we should continue our trip onto Haysi for another 20 mi. or so. Fortunately for us, after this big push, most of the way was downhillish, so our main concern was squeaking brakes, curvy tight turns, and trying not to whiteknuckle our handlebars the whole way down. The road hugged one side of the mountain and the "towns", Council, Bee, Davenport, Birchleaf (all of which were sort of indistinguishable from each other and had 1 in-service gas/grocery between them) were settled on the other side and just below this Sand Lick road that runs along a winding river.
Just to note that these mountains are impressive. I really had no idea that VA's Appalachians got so tall and turny as you get into coal mining country. We were definitely glad it was Saturday and the trucks weren't running. Apparently next to the mountains, they are the biggest impediment to success.
At Haysi (pop. 194), we stayed in our first motel: the Hill Top Motel, which, as the name suggests is at the top of a big hill about 1 1/2 long. It seems to be our lot to end the day with a big hill of some sort. The motel was a VFW Post site and the gent running the place seemed to be a Vet himself, as he had quite a bit of trouble getting around but had a wicked sense of humor and used it to help us loosen up a bit, taking advantage of our gullible, hot, and apparently feeble brains.
We ate food from Martha's Place, just around the corner: Chili, Pabst, Coffee, Bloomin' Onion, Country fried steak (Just what my mom, Martha, would of course have served us at home! Actually, other than the French waiters pictured on the wall and the friendly, but muletted, waitress Chris, I don't know that much of the place would have struck of chord with you, Mom).
We felt much better after our night's sleep here, but we just couldn't get up in the morning. It was raining when we first rose at 6, but this was really just an excuse not to get going. When we finally made it out of the place around 8:45, we couldn't get our host up, and ended up leaving the key in a potted plant by the door and a message on the answering machine.
After a quick breakfast at the only open place, the gas station, we headed up to the Breaks Interstate Park (bridging VA and KY and lovingly called "The Grand Canyon of the South" or was it East?). The climb killed us, and it was only with the help of some meditation, Janine's Chi balls for me, that we ever made it to the top. Wow. We can't totally discern whether the hills are getting harder, or it just seems that way as our legs and lungs get tighter. But I would presume that this day, was well, killer.
Once at the top we felt that we deserved a break of sorts, and there is a book in the park that other bikers on this route sign. So we headed into the park for the 3 mile loop, to see the scenes, the river and railroad, the Towers (of rock), route 80 leading to Kentucky.
Our next little ride took us into KY where it seemed that more rock immediately sprung up on the sides of the road, and took us to Elkhorn City. Although it was mostly downhill, our legs still felt like they were working pretty durn hard, so in Elkhorn we stopped for some grub and ran into two other bikers heading East, Ben and Nick, who seemed like super nice fellows, and were almost done for the day. They had about 17 miles to go to Haysi, whereas we had about 60+ still to Hindman, KY. Again, they seemed well put together and had trailers on their bikes. They recommended us to the Knott County Historical Society B&B once we got to Hindman (there is no camping for quite a while) and we set that as our site.
This day was excruciatingly long after that, but we put in some good, hard, riding. Dogs chased, we ate our snacks, we exchanged a few waves with folks, but we felt as if the climate changed a bit. People didn't seem as friendly to us as they had in VA, or to anyone. There wasn't a place to stay for 80 miles. The dilapidation of these towns was even more extreme than on the VA side. People didn't wave back at you and they seemed mighty suspicious of outsiders.
Again we were so happy it was Sunday and we were spared the coal trucks, as we saw tons of them parked on the sides of roads, lots of slides and strip mining operations, and also about 20 massive elk up on the sides of mountains.
It was almost ten (fortunately one of the longest days of the year) and had just gotten totally dark when we arrived at David Smith's B&B in Hindman. He greeted us with a smile and ice tea, got us hot, slightly sulfuric showers, settled into the huge expanse of a tent that they keep there for cyclists, made us veggie burgers after we called the local pizza joint and they had no drivers, and ice cream (on the house). The only bad part was that it too is on the top of a great, steep, nearly vertical, hill. We walked our bikes both up and down the following morning.
David was quite an interesting host. His herd of tetradactal cats were beautiful, and one, Inky, was just having a litter as we arrived. He had written and compiled an extensive book on Knott County, after setting aside his career as a Christian actor for many years. He is definitely the rich kind of character you find in a very well developed novel. And apparently his sister is a Bikram yoga instructor in FL and they hope to have collaborative retreats at the B&B. I think he said they have 150 acres, but it may have been 450. Either way, quite a few.
It was hard for us to leave our pleasant stay after eating a tasty breakfast with a precious, tiny, polydactal kitten in my lap, but we finally did. Our camera at this point was totally toast and the pictures we took of the place didn't come out, but I recommend this place highly.
Still a bit foggy around 9, we set our sites on Booneville as our resting place for the coming evening, and hoped since it was about 67 miles away (about 15 miles shorter of a day than the previous) and we were getting off earlier that we would make it there before nightfall.
I can't say that there was much that was exceptional this day, more of the same. The day started off very pleasantly. The terrain helped stretch out our legs as we continued to head west, and the roads were fairly untrafficked and seemed fresh after the rain and fog burned off from the morning. Then of course we turned off our our friendly roads and back onto 80, this time with a much different character. There were large shoulders on the road, but that didn't stop the indimidation we felt as trucks full of coal and other mined bits of earth flew by us at lightning speeds. Debris from trucks and ridged shoulders (to keep these drivers from falling asleep) made the riding a bit hairy and less pleasant, not to mention the hills. We were also shocked (unfortunately Andy's panoramic shots of this didn't make our camera's dying lineage) when we came upon a large area, probably a mile along the highway, where mountains had been totally razed. It was a site to see. Or rather, no sight to see, as there had very obviously been large mountains here, and now there was just nothing. Absolutely nothing.
We came upon a Walmart shopping complex outside of Hazard, where we met Eileen and Cono, two retired Manhattanites, who were heading west on our same route and about an hour ahead of us. Although they had a man with a van, Bill who had biked across 5 times himself, we were still pretty impressed with these folks. We let them get on and went to by ourselves a new camera at Radioshack and get ourselves some Mexican. The camera was probably worth the money, the Mexican turned out not to be worth the $11 it cost us for lunch. Many miles later, we were still grumbling about our tummies, and although Andy resisted further ingestion, I was popping Tums like a regular addict. Around Buckhorn Lake State Park (a bit off our route), the terrain travelled out of the valleyish nature and back into the mountains. We put in some good legwork despite our belching bellies, and gave ourselves some good breaks, although we were both less than pleased when I decided to stop at a gas station halfway down a good hill, and therefore lost some much needed momentum for the climb that followed. No one ran us off the road and an older couple stopped to ask us if we were 'man and wife', which is obviously important information to have about a couple of bicyclists climbing some bloody steep hills. We stopped in Buckhorn proper for some good fruit salad Yay! and the folks were very nice. They had Konan the Barbarian on their TV set in the market and I have never enjoyed having a TV in an eating establishment, but I was actually grateful to zone out on a good helping of nonsense drama.
The rest of the day we dragged our feet but enjoyed the countryside, even as we passed trailers that looked like they should be condemned, but then that produced romping dogs and/or seemingly happy children and often obese parents.
Generally we have been amazed at the number of hillside cemeteries we have seen. In many places it seems that the population of the dead greatly outweighs that of the living, and the cemeteries themselves look better cared for and attended to, with flowers and the like, than the abodes of the current residents.
We passed yet another British biker, who was on his 116th mile of the day and part of a larger group of British policemen who were travelling across country in sections (and with a pretty kick-bottom RV that passed us by as we finished our conversation.) You can check them out at www.bobbyonabike.com.
Finally we made it to Booneville and not a hill too soon, where we were delighted to find the amazing First Presbyterian Church that has a setup in the back for cyclists to camp. The setup was so perfectly generous and simple and Christian. They have a (cold) shower and sink, a porto-john, a covered picnic table area, and a nice big grassy area that is pretty private from the main road. We pitched our tent and cleaned up and then headed off to seek out some of the local fixins. The main restaurant Dooley's Diner, was closing up, but we headed to Spencer's dairy bar and ate some potatoes, tater tots for me and ripple fries for Andy, bbq and a burger. We met up again with Cono, Eileen, and Bill, (conoandeileen.livejournal.com) who had eaten at Dooley's and were staying at Linda's B&B, where they were planning on taking a rest day. I think this partially inspired us to let ourselves do the same once we got to Berea.
We slept well at the Church, after watching the many many lightning bugs go about their business along the tree-lined river and the adjoining corn fields; the character of the developed part of Booneville, with it's gas stations, etc. was hidden from view.
We got our share of fog and Dooley's in the morning. We got up around 5:30, but by 8:30 the fog was still super thick. We loaded up on snacks at the gas station (these gas stations are grocery stores, I do not know how anyone survives on the kind of "nutrition" offered by these places, lots and lots of folks have gardens/farms on their property, I do hope they get to eat a lot of it!). Our map didn't show much in the way of stops until we got close to Berea (our ending destination).
After we went up our first mountain, we turned off the large road we were on and into less dense areas. The fog cleared and the farms got progressively larger and pretty as the day moved on. We passed 3 more bikers going the opposite direction, 2 of which were on a tandem, but they were in no mind to stop and chat, so we let them be and kept both of our momentums going. We were to discover that they had just covered about 20 miles of really difficult terrain, so I completely understood that they were more interested in finishing their day than we were pre-trauma. Our thighs seemed to grow ever tighter, and we were just barely able to keep charlie horses at bay. We did have to push up a few hills, but we also made it up some daunting ones that didn't even seem possible looking at them. So all in all we were proud of ourselves, and the fact that we had decided to give ourselves the gift of a day of rest kept us going.
We started to feel pretty punchy as we approached Berea, but we made it here in good time and were done by about 3 o'clock.
The town is an odd mixture of college, deeply religious folks, and normal people. It certainly has the most diverse population of people we've seen. The college was originally founded to be an interracial institution in 1855. In 1904 a law was passed forbidding the education of white and non-white students in the same class, and it wasn't until 1950 that the law was altered and the college's doors were opened to Blacks and Indians again. Still better than much of the rest of the country. The school's banners display "learning, labor, and service" as the students here all work to keep their tuition costs low. More here: http://www.berea.edu/about/
We ate last night at the Black Feather, about a month old, very good food, and not greasy! but good local produce including rhubarb and peach tart with vanilla ice cream. Some parts of this trip are not hard :).
We settled down in the Knight's Inn for cleaning and comfort and to let our stuff explode everywhere in the room. (Although I think this is driving Andy a bit nuts) We watched Harry Potter and slept soundly. Today we have been catching up on business, eating at more of the local haunts, and just taking it easy. Tomorrow our journey will continue. Hopefully our bodies will be ready again. They were really begging for a rest day. We have tried to oblige since we are asking so much of them, pushing hard, eating lots but not often healthfully (at least not in the Michael Pollan fashion we usually strive for).
Berea marked the end of one of our TransAm maps, so tomorrow we start on the third section for us which will take us into a new time zone and into Illinois. We are keeping our ears open about the flooding and hope that you are all safe and sound wherever you are, especially in California and the mid-west.