June 17th - Rough River Dam, KY to Sebree, KY

Mileage: 75 miles
Terrain: Rolling Hills
Temperature: 90 ish degrees
Was another interesting day! Got up at the campground and had a can of spaghettios for breakfast. Cold of course, I didn’t bring a camp stove along like many of my fellow riders, I figured that I am not the best of cooks at home and for sure would light something on fire out in the nature!! Began to take down my tent and get everything packed up when some people were talking about going back to the lodge and that there was supposed to be a breakfast buffet. I thought this sounded like a good idea and I was still somewhat hungry so went on over to the lodge. Once we got there we found out that there was no buffet and that it was due to low occupancy at the lodge. So we decided to just order breakfast off of the menu. So it was a slow start and we probably didn’t leave the lodge until about 8-9:00 am which was extremely late considering the time change along with it. We had known that it was a 75ish mile day however, were told that it was going to be a fairly easy ride without many big climbs and that it was compared to some of the other days. So we got on the road and got about 30 miles or so out where the first rest stop was and there was a grocery store about a block down the road so took up the opportunity to stock up my pantry as I was really running low on food! Had a peanut butter milkshake while in this small town and then moved on. Came to the next rest stop had a snack and filled up on water and then moved on. As I was riding along had one dog scare the begezers out of me! Was coming down a small hill and it was hiding in some tall weeds and jumped right out at me. It thankfully did not keep chasing me. One of the other riders Brittany was just a little way behind me so I hollered back “Dog!” well she must have not heard me because I heard her scream when it jumped out at her. This one wasn’t a little either. It is kind of strange because we have discovered that it is the little ones that are more of a threat than the big ones. I think that the big dogs just get too tired quickly. We stopped at a stop sign shortly after and Brittany was like “Did you hear me scream like a gir?” I laughed!
I think it was yesterday that Brittany and myself were riding along and we came upon one of the young guys riding with us standing at the bottom of a long drive way, just sitting on the top tube of his bike and there were about 6-7 dog surrounding him barking at him. He just stood there calm as could be, as we just rode by. I was kind of glad that he was there to distract the dogs so that they wouldn’t mess with me. He had this little video camera called the “Go Pro” on his helmet which gets passed around and was recording the entire thing. Well as he tried to take off later on one of the dogs nipped at him and drew blood. Unfortunately he had shut the Go Pro off before he had taken off. The video is crazy though as all you can hear are dogs barking nonstop.
Kept riding and about 15 miles later one of our fellow riders stated that they were running low on water so we stopped at a gas station along the way and got an Icee as well due to the very hot conditions. Some other riders from our group stopped here as well and stated that there was a storm rolling in. We were just 8 miles out from Sebree, so decided to make a break for it. Turns out that as we turned to the other side of the gas station and started up the road that we were headed right for a very dark storm. We rode about 4 miles looking for shelter as we knew that any minute it was going to start down pouring! We found a little smoke shack at a Tyson Hatchery and took cover. As soon as we stepped in it started to down pour!! Waited it out for about 30-45 minutes here and then it was just sprinkling so decided to make a break for Sebree. Got into town and went to the First Baptist Church where we were staying for the night. They host about 275 cross country cyclist a year and the pastors’ wife cooks for about 245 of them. So she had cooked us all a wonderful meal. However, I wasn’t to hungry because when we got into town I had a milkshake for a local restaurant that was rated by our guide Pepper as the best along the route. I had Reeses and would have to say it is probably the best milkshake I have evey had, it was delicious!! So there was a swimming pool in town here in Sebree until about 2001 when it was shut down. Many cyclists passing through would stop there to shower, camp in the yard and Violet, the pastors’ wife would cook for them. Well once it was shut down the cyclist passing through had no place to stay so in 2002 they built a wonderful addition to their church with a shower!! I was thrilled because it was warm. It seems to be that in many cases the showers that we do get are ICE COLD. So it was WONDERFUL to have a warm shower!! Now they host cyclist and have a lounge downstairs and kitchen and a wonderful eating area upstairs. It is so nice of Violet to do this for cyclist, it seems that she really enjoys doing this for cyclist and hearing their stories and she has many stories to tell as well. She told us and showed picture of a unicyclist that Pepper met that came through here last year. I thought this was amazing because a unicycle is only single speed and could not imagine climbing hill on one of these. He is the one that Pepper asked how many crashes he had and the unicyclist stated that they don’t have crashes on UPD’s also known as unplanned dismounts. Violet also spoke about a paraplegic that rode a hand cycle across America that they hosted and many others on very unique bikes. She also stated that we are some of the early one and that in a few weeks she will be hosting many more cyclist that are coming from the West coast to East. However, she has already had many cyclists that are going East to West as we are.
The day became even more interesting when the pastor had offered to take us to a local place where on Friday and Saturday night they have locals playing country and gospel music. He offered to take us in the church van and it was only about a 2 mile ride however, many of us did not want to have to get back on our bikes. We really didn’t know what to expect but figured what the heck. We arrived and to say the least it wasn’t exactly what we had thought it was. However, the musicians were good musicians and singers however; we were some of the youngest people there. There were probably about 60 or so people there and many of the older men had asked some of us younger women to dance. Well one older guy asked me to dance and I was like what the heck sure! He taught me how to do the two step and travel which I guess is two stepping backwards. We soon realized that none of the guys in our group were dancing and once we left realized that it was because many of the people were very traditional and the guys were supposed to ask the women to dance. It was not exactly what we expected but we all sure did have fun with it!! One of the girls in our group even got up and sang a song for everyone. The pastor told us that it was just a bunch of locals playing music, it wasn’t a group just whoever could come and play along with the group. The pastor brought us back to the church where we slept inside in the VERY nice facility at about 9:30 pm and where we all slept very well. Woke up this morning about 6:00 am to realize that it is storming so I figured that I would get caught up on this blog. It is now about 7:15 am and it has been raining, lightening and thundering for a while and is supposed to be until about 11:00 am or so. It is supposed to be a fairly short ride being about a 55 mile day to the Ohio River where we take a ferry across and cross into Illinois. This is especially exciting as we are going to be in our third state!! I think I was wrong earlier in the blog when I stated how many riding days we have until our rest day, anyway, today is Saturday we ride Sunday as well and Monday is our rest day. So two more riding days and then a rest day. Tonight we are staying at a state park in Cave and Rock and it sounds like there is a lot of neat stuff to see there and along the river!! Should be another interesting day!!