Day Seventeen - First State.

This post refers to Sunday 17th May.

I woke up early this morning, I knew I was going to have a long day ahead. After a service station breakfast, I set off. The first stint was predominantly uphill. I went over the state border after about 12 miles or so, and the transition wasn't immediately obvious. After a few more miles, it was. There wasn't a bricked house in sight, everyone lived in 'trailers', or static caravans. They almost all had too much property than they could fit inside too, so the land surrounding their plot was filled with all their stuff. I was quite overwhelmed & intimidated by all this at first, I felt as though I had left my comfort zone of Virginia.

I later had good reason to be intimidated. Kentucky is FULL of dogs. Thankfully, a fair few are tied up / restrained somehow, but a lot weren't. This means that you have to be on your guard the whole time, in case you have to outrun them, or try and stop them somehow. I've found that by shouting 'NO!' at them works fairly well.

I've decided that I don't much care for Kentucky, nor the Appalacians anymore, so I'm planning on hot-foooting the next bit to Illinois, where I should be by this time next week. Seriously, the dogs get you down, it's just added stress when you're exhausted, or going slowely up a steep hill.

(I realise lots of people reading this will be revising towards exams of some kind, and so complaining about being chased by dogs seems somewhat trivial. I'm not really a dog person at the best of times, and it's just a nuisance I could do without.)

Anyway, I'm in a Motel outside of Hindman. I will be changing onto a new map again in the next few days, which is exciting. My maps will go even faster when I'm on the flats, which is also exciting. I'm not wishing my trip away by any means, but I like to see progress. I've also got a new time zone soon, which is CRAZY.

I'm going to bed now, I put 91 miles on the clock today, though 3 of them were spent cycling back up the side of a mountain I'd just flown down, thinking I'd missed a turn when I hadn't. ugh...