Catching Up

We are now well past halfway, just into Montana having a rest day in West Yellowstone, after a wonderful day yesterday riding through the national park. It is an interesting transition point at half way around the city of Pueblo. We move from flat, hot, desert riding, back to mountains. The Rockies, while much higher than the Appalachians and Ozark Ranges in the east, have much more gradual gradients.

We are really glad to be going east to west for a number of reasons. A lot of the uphill gradients seem easier going west. As well the scenery is so spectacular in the Rockies. There have been many days on both sides of the continent when I have said to myself this is the best day riding I have ever had - it keeps getting better. And the prevailing westerlies have not been overly prevailing. Wind directions change across the day and we have been rising early to beat the headwinds that pick up around the middle of the day.

One unexpected joy is making friends with other westerly riders that we frequently ride with, and sometimes leapfrog over days. There is an informal group of us from the US, UK and Australia that have bonded as we ride along sharing the joys, stories, meals, drinks and the love of bikes. Tonight they have headed on to Ennis where there is apparently a distillery that puts cyclers up. it should be quite a party. we are hoping we will stay there tomorrow night and catch our friends by Missoula, about 5 days away.

Missoula is home to the American Adventure Cycling Association that organise the wonderful TransAm route maps, as well as many other bike touring routes across the US. We are told their headquarters is a Mecca for bike tourers and bike lovers in general. 

Kentucky Charm

 

Kentucky geographically and geologically can be divided into east and west, the east still being the mountainous Appalachians, the West more open farmland with mainly corn. Now we know where all the corn syrup comes from. 

When riding over the border to Kentucky from Virginia it became clear that Kentucky has some of the poorest areas in the USA. There are also many loose dogs making it a hazard for cyclists - although I had more trouble with hornets. Every cyclist we met carries pepper spray and there were a couple of times we had to use it. Mostly we had success dispersing dogs with a marine/sport Horn. Often they were just bored. We did see an old border Collie teaching a younger one not to chase us bikes, presumably due to having learned by experience about pepper spray. 

We were warned about the kindness of people in Kentucky and this has certainly been true. It is typified by Michelle above,  who ran the coffee/gun/petrol store in remote Boxville,  who cooked us breakfast and refused to accept payment. We have also noticed that gas stations are also social centres in small towns, along with the churches. Michelle is also looking forward to the August 2 total eclipse as it will bring together all her grandchildren for the first time in many years when they all come to watch.

There was also a lovely dog experience when a beautiful Australian Blue Healer followed us to the top of a mountain and sat quietly with us while we had lunch. He must have heard our accents as we rode past.