Kiki Bikes Across America

Thursday, June 11th: Lincoln’s Birthplace near Buffalo, KY to Fordsville, KY

Woke up at 2am to a bit of a thunderstorm with lightening, loud thunder, and lots and lots of rain and some heavy winds. We had camped out behind the bathroom at the a little picnic pavilion area at Lincoln’s Birthplace, but camping was prohibited, so we did it behind the bathroom and some trees to kind of hide our presence. It worked. I also was able to charge my solar panel in the janitor’s closet overnight, so I had a fully-charged battery for today. I dozed in and out of sleep during the torrential downpours between 2-7am and about 4:30am I woke up again for good and decided to move all my stuff out of the tent and to the pavilion to try to pack the tent up somewhat dryer and I didn’t want to be caught at 6am in another huge downpour and be rushed to get packed up before the ranger came to open the gate to the picnic area. I knew the park opened at 8am, so figured they’d be around by 7am or so to open the gate. I finished packing up my stuff and organizing the tent and tarp to kind of attempt to dry out a little but draping it over tables under the pavilion. I then just put the tent on a table and crawled inside for an hour until 6am and dozed off for a bit until the alarm went off. I got up and finished packing up the tent, then woke the guys up and by this time the rain was coming down hard again, so they didn’t really want to get up and go out in it.

By 7:30 or so the ranger had come to open the gate and luckily all of my stuff was out back behind the bathrooms and Chris and George’s tents were still up, but not too visible from the entrance. The ranger came, unlocked the gate, and drove off. So we didn’t get caught. The guys finished drying off their tents and tarps and such and packing things away and I boiled some water for oatmeal and we all had some of that before heading out for the day. We left about 9am and the rain had stopped luckily. We biked all morning with overcast skies, but no real rain. We got 32 miles in and then stopped for lunch at this Double L grocer (which looked like a house which was converted into a grocery store). A guy named Arnold was very friendly and made us all sandwiches and we sat down and ate there and then were on our way again. We still had about 40 miles to go. After lunch, we climbed a short, but steep hill and apparently right after the creek and that hill was where we changed time zones. We didn’t realize it immediately, but maybe 45 minutes later we realized we were in a new time zone. My cell phone updated to the new time immediately and we all of a sudden gained an extra hour in the day which is always nice.

We continued on biking and got some ice cream, refilled water, and had 29 more miles from that point. We stopped again about 18 miles from our destination for another refill and popsicle stop for George. He only had 3 ice creams today and 2 popsicles … a bit more than the usual. On our last 15 miles today we passed by a gas station and saw two other transamerican cyclists – two whom we hadn’t run into before… we just saw them in passing so aren’t sure if they were going East to West or the other way. We didn’t see them since, so maybe they’re going the other way.

Just 8 miles outside of Fordsville, we got caught in a nasty downpour of rain with lightening off in the distance and some scattered thunder. We first found a shelter to hang out under until it passed. It passed and so we thought we were in the clear, but about 2-3 miles later, we were hit again with the rain, thunder, and lightening for the last 5-6 miles to Fordsville. So we got to Fordsville pretty wet and cold and stopped at the first place, a little place called Momma’s Kitchen or something to that effect. The people were all really friendly and we sat down, had some hot chocolate and ordered 2 large 14″ pizzas along with 12 breadsticks. In other words, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs – we ate a lot, but still wound up with 5 slices of pizza leftover. One guy there told us about this park about 3 miles up the road where we could camp and use hot showers and there was a pavilion, so we went up there to check it out. It looks like a run-down baseball park now turned into go-kart arena with really old bleechers and an actual nice bathroom with shower (fairly warm too, not super hot, but not cold at all). It was really nice and we hung all of tents, tarps, rain flies, clothing, etc. to dry out a bit. We’re camping out in the pavilion because we here the weather’s only going to get worse, so why be in the rain if we can avoid it?

Tomorrow, we’re continuing on the journey to get out of Kentucky. We have another full day and then probably a half day or so of being in Kentucky. Then we’ll hit Illinois! Another new state:)

Let’s hope we wake up to nicer weather tomorrow!

GPS Stats:
75.9 miles
6:34 moving time
34.2 max speed
11.6 avg speed

Computer Stats:
77.47 miles
6:32 moving time
34.4 max speed
11.8 avg speed

Snake count: 1 today
Dog chases: 1 today