Day 33. Climbing Kentucky. Hazard, KY

8am start from Booneville after breakfast at the Bus Stop Restaurant with a 3:30 arrival into Hazard, KY.   It was another great weather day with a cool and shady morning followed by a warm and sunny afternoon.  Over 6000 ft. of climbing today, the most on the trip so far. 

 

Leaving our overnight spot at the Booneville Presbyterian Church at 7am. The other folks were just starting to wake up and start their day westbound on the TransAm Route. 

 

The night before Alyssa shares her knowledge of our route going east. She's was recommending some alternate routes and campsites south of Hazard that they had used. The cross country bikers are always giving or seeking help and info from other riders. 

 

Last night before sleep John catches me reading my Kindle on the picnic table. I'm re-reading one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. 

 

Willem from the Netherlands was the first westbound rider we greeted today.  A really nice guy with belt drive instead of a chain on his bike with internal gearing in the rear hub. He was the first of 6 riders we would see this morning that had all stayed together east of us the night before. 

 

Jeff followed shortly after Willem. Jeff was from Dayton and this was his second attempt at the cross country TransAm ride. Apparently last year he had just started near Portland, OR and some how woke up in the hospital. The top speed on his bike that day was 34 and as he has no memory of what happened. He believes he hit a bad spot on the pavement, had some kind of crash and spent 10 days in the hospital. All healed up, he's starting from Yorktown, VA and ending in Portland this time!!  Way to go Jeff!!

 We had a lot of climbing today. If you recall a post a few days back I complained about the incredible shortness and steepness of the hills, most taking less than a minute to climb up, go down and then start the process again, no rythm is what I said. Well....we've got lots of rythm now!  The hills are much longer, still steep to very steep tho,  and some climbs take us 15 or 20 minutes to grind up, occasionally crawling at 3.5 mph. That's not much faster than a walk!🚶🏻 

We also had some great mostly flat runs through the "hollers" along side clear streams in limestone beds, between the high ridges we had to climb out on. 

 

Because we wanted to make it 67 miles to Hindman instead of stopping 20 miles earlier in Hazard (which we did anyway) we didn't stop for any lunch today. In the little spot known as Chavies we found a gas station with Gatorade, coffee and ice for our drinks. We ate snacks from our panniers under a canopy with picnic tables and met these two men who were cutting up steel for scrap with torches across the street and also taking a lunch break-hardworking men trying to find a way to make a living since the coal mines have all shut down. Very nice guys and we ended up talking almost an hour (so much for a short break John!). I had to listen very hard to understand what they said.  More than any other place so far in Kentucky many of the local folks around here have almost a different dialect than an accent. 

 

We stopped for directions into Hazard and locations of motels and restaurants from L to R: Dale, AJ and Charlie. Really nice and funny guys asked about our journey. We joked a bit and they sent us off with proper directions. We did not want to climb any unnecessary hills today!

Even though we were tired and hot we probably would have pushed on another 20 miles to Hindman but we only had two options for overnight sleeping after Hazard, a bike hostel run by a person noted on our Adventurecycling maps and a Warmshower host. We heard the night before that the hostel guy had turned down our campmates saying he wasn't feeling well. I contacted both parties and neither of them contacted me back by the time we got to Hazard so our prospects weren't looking good in Hindman. If your curious, Warmshowers is a cyclist only network of people who offer basic overnight accommodations for free.  Sometimes they are active touring cyclist and sometimes they just like to host and meet new people. To use the service you have to agree to be a host as well. 

The AmericanElite Inn had a great rate and decent rooms but their washers were broken.  So this is how we washed our stinky clothes tonight.

We hiked 1.5 miles for a nice dinner at Applebee's and now we will sleep to take on more Appalachian climbing tomorrow. Wish us luck.