One way to Bee

One of several amusing church signs in Bee, Kentucky. Another just down the road : "We aren't Dairy Queen, but our Sundays are great!"

Kentucky is like level two of our cross country challenge. Level two has all the difficulties of level one- hilly terrain, windy backroads, afternoon thunderstorms- but now we face an added obstacle: the Kentucky canine. We were forewarned about Kentucky's hounds by seasoned cyclists headed the opposite direction. One of them said he had been chased by over forty dogs. Surely an exaggeration, I thought. Our first of many dog chases occurred just a few miles across the stat line. Adam and I were a few hundred yards behind Scott, who had disappeared around the bend with alarming speed. A man standing at his mailbox, presumably the dog owner, pointed to his pups in the road and said, "If them dogs start off after you, you just pedal, hard." And so we did, again and again across the state. Scott carries a small container of mace in case of a particularly threatening encounter. I bought a small air horn at Wal-Mart, but the results have been rather disappointing. (The thing let out a quiet pffffft on it's inaugural use.) Adam just yells GO HOME in his harshest tone. He's had some success, but some of the dogs just don't have homes. Others live on a short chain in the front yard. Eastern Kentucky is very depressed. Coal stained jeans hang on fences and clotheslines, the industry has left the land and the people depleted and exhausted. We have found them more reserved than Virginians, but no less hospitable. A gentler side of Kentucky is Berea, the small town where we are taking a rest day. We're staying with some great folks at Berea College, which is an all around cool place with an interesting history.

A couple of photos: the first is from Breaks Interstate Park, which is said to be the Grand Canyon of the East. Also, the sweet pin they gave us at the campground there, for having completed the 570 miles of Virginia.