Day 12 : Wrong Turn...

From Berea, KY to Springfield, KY - ~72 miles

we slept in a little bit this morning, loaded up the tent, and headed for breakfast at cracker barrel. cracker barrel is always a good breakfast, and this was no exception. we got on the bikes and headed out on the route, to find that we had a bike path for the first couple of miles out of town.

the beginning of our ride seemed easy enough. about 20 miles into our ride, we read the directions on our map to find that they said, "turn left onto unsigned jack turner road". to which we thought...what exactly do we do about that. so, we started into our next segment hoping that we would find our turn. we rode and rode, and finally we were positive that we had gone too far, and so we stopped and got the gps out to discover that we had gone a good 3 miles past our turn.

we turned around and headed back in the direction that we had come...and as we came up on the turn that we had missed, we discovered that it was at the bottom of a huge hill that we had climbed...and when i say huge, i mean at least 15 minutes of climbing. and i am pretty sure that there is not much that is more demoralizing than climbing a massive hill, only to discover that it was all for nothing. at any rate, we got back on the right route...only to find another big hill to climb. as we climbed again, i said out loud to cailyn..."every good story has conflict"...and climbing that hill for what felt like the second time definitely felt like conflict.

as we have gotten into kentucky, you can definitely see a huge difference in economic status. when we were in eastern kentucky, it really felt like it was a much lower status..and then as we have gotten more into central kentucky, we have gotten into horse country and there is definitely a much higher economic status. it has really left me thinking about what causes the difference. it has caused me to think about poverty and about work ethic. i don't know that i have come to any solid conclusions at this point in time, but hopefully it is something that i can continue to process through this trip.

as we finished our riding for the night, we arrived into springfield, ky and called the local police to see about camping in a local park that was listed in our maps. they took down our names and told us we were welcome to put up a tent wherever we wanted to in the park. so we stopped in to wendy's, grabbed a quick dinner, and headed to the park to set up for the night. they had bathrooms, but no showers...but all in all, a good location for no cost.