Wednesday, August 2, 2000

Today we crossed the Ohio River and entered the state of Kentucky. We rode from Aberdeen, OH to Millersburg, KY, a distance of 59 miles. As soon as we entered Kentucky we had to climb out of the Ohio River valley. The hill was a couple of miles long and the entire length of the climb, the road was under construction. The traffic lanes were so narrow that a car could not pass us unless no traffic was coming down the hill. It is not a good feeling when a large truck is right behind you and there is no place for you to go to get out of his way.

Later, the navigator got us lost for the third day in a row. This time it resulted in us going around in a circle that was over 20 miles long. We started up highway 62 going east. We turned onto a road that ran along a ridge (it still went up and down via steep grades), came to another highway going south and ended up back on highway 62 going west. We started at a stoplight and ended up at the very same stoplight. It took us over 2 1/2 hours to end up at the same place we started from. Fire the navigator. It seemed that every house and farm we passed had 2, 3, 4, or more dogs running loose. We got chased by more dogs today than, on all the rest of this trip. Kentucky is much more hilly than Ohio was. We spent all day going up and down one hill after another.

The weather has become very hot and humid. I wore one T-shirt for two days. I sweat so much into the T-shirt that after it dried after the second day, a burgundy T-shirt was crossed with white stripes from all the dried sweat. Today we stopped at the site of the Blue Lick battleground. It was the site of a battle where a group of Kentucky pioneers were led into a trap and badly beaten by the Indians.

We were very tired when we reached Millersburg. We thought that we would need to go to Paris, KY to find a motel room, 10 miles further southeast from Millersburg. As we went through Millersburg, we saw a small motel. The cost of the room was just over $30 but they did not have any non smoking rooms. The rooms were neat and clean so we stopped and rested our tired bones. We asked where there was a laundry and the owner let us use the motels washer and dryer. All in all it was a good place to stop at.