Week 4

This week was very fun and it was full of hospitality and great breakfasts.  First we camped on the lakefront of Hungry Mother State Park.  We got to go swimming there and we even got the brave Lynn to plummet off the sky dive.  It was amazingly refreshing and to my surprise very warm.  I just hope that It was really warm.  Anyways the folds over there were awful nice to us and we rode out with a smile on our faces.  We were looking back on our journey and we realized that we wanted to help peoples dreams come true just like the folks back at the Elk Garden Methodist Church.  We decided that we would have our ride benefit others so we decided to help out the nice people at the Dream Foundation.  You should really check it out, we have our own page on it. Heres a link on it http://www.dreamfoundation.org/ Then we set off to climb a what seemed never ending hill :p.  It was gruesome but the scenery made it all worth it.  Once you get to the top its just gorgeous.  You could even see the border of Kentucky and Virginia.  It also looks over the Southern Grand Canyon.  Its a massive canyon carved out of the Mississippi River.  Unfortunatley it rained real hard when we got to the top.  Then we swooped down into Kentucky and had what seemed like the best breakfast of the whole trip at The Rusty Fork.  They will whip you up a meal of massive proportions.  It filled us up but real good but ended up making us lathargic :p.  A few days later we stopped at a place called Crossroads Grocery.  We bought some warm local made gingerbread that tasty mighty fine considering it was wet and cold.  Then what seemed real good to me was when we stopped at this country store.  We walked in and we saw an elderly man at the counter.  We went to the back and got some gatorades when he asked John if we were the folks biking across America.  John had a big grin on his face and slyly said "Ya".  Then when we went to the front to buy them the man said "No one biking across America pays in my store" so we left with big grin and the power of free gatorade on our side.  Then we came across a once large and coal-mining town.  The whole city depent on it  but when all the coal was saturated the buisness moved to Illinois leaving the small buisness' doomed to failure.  Now its just a small down perhaps an fraction of its old size and prosper.  Kentucky also was great for its hospitality.  It tought me to be a kind stranger like those we've run into.  The paster and youth leader of the local church were amazing, they gave us a place to eat and best of all showers :D!  Then we came to something awfully strange.  It was the Kentucky Police Office.  It was a very laid back facility and all the officers welcomed us and got us a place to stay.  They gave us t-shirts, sheriff patches, and some digits of their favorite pizza place.  Sheriff Wheeler Jacobs gave us a great quote showing how far behind they were "The way I see it, we're so far behind the times that when the world comes to an end the folks here in Hindman will still have another 5 years left".  It was a great quote and gave us all a nice laugh.  Well Got to go to bed next week looks sure to be hard ;).

~Hannah