Friday, July 11, 2008

Cruising the Back Roads

Today started out with a decent (for a freebie from the hotel) breakfast. Then it was north into Kentucky. Since David and I have this "must-do-all-the-counties-in-Kentucky-on-our-motorcycles" list, we planned a route that would pick up the last of the six counties in the western part of Kentucky.

First it was into Calloway County and then across the Land Between the Lakes area to pick up Trigg County. We then took I-24 to Eddyville and straight north to get Crittenden, Union, and Webster Counties. Now the only county left to get in the western half of the state was McLean County.

The plan was to head east after getting Webster County. Near Providence Kentucky we missed a turn and who knows exactly where we ended up. The road numbers we were seeing weren't on my map of Kentucky! At any other time, if we were cruising the back roads, everyone and their uncle would be sitting on the front porch watching the traffic and in the background you would hear banjo music. Today, no one was out.

FINALLY we found a woman walking a dog and asked her how to get to the Western Kentucky Parkway; forget about the cross country route! She said, "Just go down the road to the Kangaroo Mart and turn right and that road will take you to the Parkway." She didn't say the Kangaroo Mart was ten miles away! We did make it to the Kangaroo Mart and then the Parkway.

We did not skip McLean County. The county line between Muhlenberg County (where we are in Central City) and McLean County is just about eleven miles north of our hotel. Before we checked in, we drove up past the line, turned around and then came back and checked in. Now we have officially visited 119 of the 120 counties on our motorcycles. The only county left is Grant County - just north of Lexington and I have no idea why it will be the last. Some day we will plan a lunch run and celebrate the last county.

Speaking of lunch, today's lunch spot was in Marion at the Front Porch Restaurant. In any small town, if you want to know where to eat, ask at the gas station. The clerk (usually a woman) knows all the places in town and will give you an opinion about what is best. Sometimes you will even get a run down on the specials.

Tonight we are in a very nice Super 8 (yes, there is such a thing). We have our first indoor pool of the trip and it was very refreshing after a longer than planned day on the bikes.

Tomorrow we head home but there will probably be one more blog posting as a summary and a few musings from our trip.

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