Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Hazard to Hindman

We slept in this morning until 8:30 since we only had 23 miles to go. We had a short day today due to distance between accomodations and will have a long day tomorrow (68 miles). We went north east from Hazard on Hwy 80 which was a huge four lane highway with major coal truck traffic. There were lumps of coal on the shoulder which was very wide. We turned off at the Dwarf exit (the name of a town) and headed south to Hwy 550 east. Again we rode along a beautiful creek with mountains rising up steeply on either side. When we reached Hindman we looked for the sign for the Knott Co. Historical Society. We found the sign opposite the courthouse and rode up to the bottom of a terribly steep hill that had a sign pointing up for the historical society. The hill was so steep we made Jack get out and walk while we pushed the bikes and trailer. When we reached the top, there was Dave (the proprietor) with glasses of ice cold ice tea. They sure tasted good.


Dave provides accomodations to cyclists, bird watchers, and hikers. Dave's grandfather built the house of native stone quarried on the property. Jack has had little time to pay attention to the ball since there are at least 5 cats in residence at the historical society.
In anticipation of more climbing in the Appalachians, we went to the post office and mailed 15 lbs. of gear ahead to Christiansburg, VA. Tomorrow we enter Virginia!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the story about Jack chasing, fighting, being intimitated by 5 cats. Your trip sounds exciting. You stop by on your way home, you hear!!!!!!! Anyways, Dad got the last 3 reports put in the mail today. We're gone. We'll also be gone Fri to Wed, Babies Baptism andseeing a Doc and friends and go find mushrooms, they're finally showing their faces. Good Luck, Gisela

Michael Podolny said...

Wow - not too long now and you'll be smelling the Atlantic

Dave and Belinda said...

Hi Gisela, we will stop by on the way home..we promise! Have great mushroom hunting!

Hey Michael, yes we have only one more state to cross, but we still have plenty of Appalachian mountains to climb. They are proving to be very formidable, second to Utah on the difficulty scale.