Last night and this morning we were treated to some delicious home cooked food in the lodge at the park. A large breakfast (2 eggs, bacon, 2 biscuits and gravy, and potatoes) again powered me for the first 20 miles of the trip. Everyone was feeling good after our first 20 miles - we passed into our second state of the trip, Kentucky! On that same note, when entering Breaks Interstate Park last night we signed in to receive a pin that says we biked 575 miles across the state of VA!
Eastern Kentucky, in my mind, is the heart of Appalachia as most of the US thinks of the region, poor and depressed. Eastern KY is really beautiful (except for the mountain top removal) and kind of looks like VA. Among TransAm bikers, Eastern KY is known for unleashed dogs who come out and chase riders and huge coal trucks that fly up or down hills with no regard.
To me, today was probably the hardest day of the trip so far. We climbed 4 large mountains and one of them was directly after our delicious lunch stop - lunch was awesome but we sat around too long watching some World Cup soccer (one huge drawback of the trip is missing all of the games!) and cooling completely down. This long break made the climbing extremely hard not to mention today was probably the hottest day of the trip to date. I saw a max temp of 96 degrees F, but others reported temperatures over 100 later in the day.
Look back at Day 8 and Day 9 for some pictures that have been updated since the internet is a little faster here!
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