Day 15: Keeeeentucky!

The rain was still landing on the tent when I woke, though a look outside told me it had actually stopped — just wind now, flinging around what was left of it. Everything I owned had turned some shade of stained and filthy, my bike worst of all, and cleaning up took forever even though we both knew the only option for the day was seventy-five miles to Hindman regardless. We left Breaks and coasted downhill toward the state line. I glanced back just in time to catch the Welcome to Virginia sign, and then, around the very next bend, we were in Kentucky. It felt like something worth marking.

Bye bye, Virginia.

State number two.

I’d heard and read no end of wild stories about Kentucky, and sure enough, barely a few metres past the state line, our first feral dog came trotting along the shoulder like he owned it. The roadside itself had turned noticeably trashier too. We stopped in Elkhorn City for breakfast, where I managed to find wifi and called home, then got back on the road quickly, conscious of the miles still ahead and now sharing the lane with even more coal trucks. This was coal country in earnest — even the houses and shopfronts carried banners and stickers declaring their love for the local miners, the whole place clearly running on it.

Even the Kentucky turtles look evil.

Five separate climbs stood between us and the day’s end, and they slowed everything to a crawl. Dogs ran loose and occasionally charged, chickens clucked their way around ramshackle pens, and figures sat back in the shadows of porches watching us pass. The poverty here was stark, trailer homes falling in on themselves, a different country entirely from the Virginia we’d left that morning.

Most services had shut down out here.

We fought our way up and over each climb and stopped at a Dairy Bar to refuel — the accents thick, but the people friendlier than the scenery suggested they had reason to be. Back on a busy road with a wide shoulder, lumps of coal that had bounced off passing trucks littered the verge. The landscape had gone strange around us, whole mountains stripped bare for coal, leaving gaps in the hills that looked almost wounded.

Late in the afternoon, with maybe thirty miles left, I felt my back wheel start to throb. My first flat of the trip — I finally felt like a proper touring cyclist. We couldn’t find the culprit in the tyre no matter how we turned it, so I fitted a fresh tube, planning to patch the old one later, checked carefully that nothing was pinching, and started pumping. Watching the pressure build, I noticed a bubble forming under the rubber — the new tube had gotten pinched after all — and I yanked the pump off just in time to watch it blow anyway. Tube number three went in with both of us checking and rechecking every step after every stroke of the pump, until it finally seated properly and held.

Entering dry counties now — no alcohol.

Hmm.

Easy does it.

Back on the road, the clouds turned black and the light started to fail, and we raced the last twenty-five miles into Hindman, sprinting up and over every hill in our way. There were two options for the night: a motel off the route, or the Historical Society — our preferred choice, except our tents were still soaked from the night before and camping was the only option there, and with the Adventure Cycling group also headed that way we had no idea if there’d be room, and no answer when we called ahead. We rode through Hindman itself and hit yet another climb toward the motel, tired and short-tempered but keeping it civil, and trudged to the top only to find no sign of the place. A gas station attendant told us it was two miles up another hill and, by the sound of it, not somewhere you’d want to stay. We tried the Historical Society one more time, and this time David picked up — camping only, he said, but a free beer, laundry done for us, and supper and breakfast for twenty-five dollars. Deal done.

We arrived thoroughly wrecked to find Terry already there, who helped us in with the bags and fetched us each a beer while David met us at the door with a tall glass of iced tea. We settled in for beer, pizza, and potatoes as the day’s frustrations quietly dissolved. Cooper asked Terry what he made of Kentucky so far, and he answered in his broadest Australian, “It’s bloody primitive.” Then David produced jars of moonshine and poured us all a shot, which, against expectations, turned out to be genuinely good.

Remember these, Bonda?

Moonshine.

David, the saviour.