Day 9 – Lookout to….Hazard?

Some days go how you plan them. Then there’s today. But variety is the spice of life… or something

Apparently Pikeville KY is an amazing civil engineering feat. No, I don’t me how epic the DQ is (tho I highly recommend a late night DQ run after a long ride). The road that cuts through Pikeville is one of the largest civil engineering projects in the western hemisphere. I’m not sure where all these roads went before the cut-through, but now they go through pretty amazing man-made landscapes.

JP got a bit of a jump on me today. Since we were staying off route, we had to drive to the start location. Rather than get the boys up super early just to be stuck in the MCC, Heidi and I let them sleep in a bit (6:45! gasp!) while JP and Art left the hotel about 7. JP snapped this photo in the morning fog of a particularly bike friendly IGA.

There were two pretty serious climbs early in the ride (1k’ and 800′ respectively) that had some serious grade to them. I caught up with JP at the bottom of the second climb and we continued on the route together. After about 8 miles, it was pretty obvious JP was gassed from the previous 2 days’ climbs. JP has really been kicking ass on the climbs, especially considering he normally trains in the flatlands around Lake Ontario. However all that ass kicking came at a price. His legs were spent. He hooked a ride and I pushed on through the hills.

Heidi had more practical plans for the day. After the first few days, we realized we had all packed too many clothes (and we only allowed for about six days of clothing plus swimsuits, etc to begin with, so this was a bit of a surprise). We all sorted through our bags and chose some clothes to send back home. Today, Heidi stopped at one of the PO’s along the route and got 2 small boxes of stuff we don’t need sent back to Maryland. While we still have the same number of bags, they’re not nearly as full which makes packing them away in the MCC much easier.

About 55 miles in to the ride, we found that the route out of Dwarf, KY was closed due to construction. Heidi was a few miles in front of me in the MCC and she started working her way through the detour and attempting to get on route. I followed behind and eventually we found ourselves pretty far off route and headed in towards Hazard. While Hazard is (basically) on route, I had burned a fair bit just getting there because of the detour. I called Hazard “good enough” and jumped in the MCC for the ride to the hotel.

We’re once again staying off route… there aren’t a lot of hotels in this part of the state. But tonight rather than staying at a mass market hotel, we’re staying at the Buckhorn Lake State Park Resort. It’s a hotel and resort run by the state of Kentucky. Beautiful views from each room, great food, and lots to do. Dax even got to play mini-golf. He was shockingly good.

 

Tomorrow we ride to Berea, KY, the end point of the second ACA map for this ride. JP’s legs are pretty nuked so he’s going to take tomorrow as a rest day. It’s 77 miles and a fair bit of climbing but I hope to have us in to the hotel in the early afternoon. We’ll see how it goes.