Today began before dawn when a parade of gasoline powered golf carts drove through my campsite. It wasn't as bad as when the irrigation nailed me in Kooskia, Idaho. But it was dark, serious pre-dawn. It seems the path to the maintanence shed goes that way, and things need to be gassed up for the Sunday morning onslaught of golfers. Then the church bells went off. Good grief! Still dark, not even pretend light. I didn't check the time, but the bells rang full bore for about ten minutes non-stop. Just in case anyone was even thinking about laying around in bed and NOT going to church. Or getting up and attending the church of the bicycle. This is, after all, what some people refer to as the bible belt.

I tossed & turned for a while longer. When the sky was plausibly lightening, I emerged from the tent and set about the business of the day.

The ride today rolled up and down across largely open farm and pasture land. There's a lot of tobacco growing activity, some horsey activity, some cows, and a lot of thistles in some places. These people need to set up a weed control board.

I can smell the weed drying in the open tobacco barns occasionally. There's about a 10mph wind out of the northeast, so whatever scents the air carried were ram-injected into my nostrils as I pedalled into the breeze.

The topography is that of randomly oriented drainages, which are superimposed on flat-lying slabby limestone bedrock. This results in sort of a Missouri affect with the roads....they twist and turn all over the place, and somehow it seems like there's more uphill than down. Between the wind and the ups I felt beat by the time I pedalled (down hill into the wind) into Springfield at mid day.

There are firemen and fireladies in the middle of the road, stopping each vehicle and asking for domations. When my turn came I asked where I could get a good meal. The lady replied "well, there's Hardies and Wendies and Burger King and any ole thing you might want just down the street." When I explained that I was looking t sit down and eat some home cooked food, she looked sort of dumbfounded & said "I just don't think we have anything like that here". At this point another fireperson chimed in with "go to Martha's, it's just up top the hill". The last bit gave me some pause, particularly since it was not a hill I would need to ride up anyway, but it sounded like this is the only game in town, so off I went in low gear in search of fuel. Martha's was worth the effort. Big all-you-can-eat Sunday buffet, jammed parking lot. Good food.

The ride over to Harrodsburg was more of this morning, I'm burning calories like crazy. There are few trees to break the wind, and I seem to be right up there with the microwave towers again.

this is what I mean by rolley polley

Land is being chopped up into resdential lots all through this part of the country. It's not clear to me where the people who buy and live in these houses work. There also seem to be a lot of houses for sale.

Harrodsburg, a town of 8K, was remarkably dead downtown on a sunny Sunday. There just plain wasn't anybody out doing anything. Except for two kids out giving away lemonade in return for donations to the hurricane relief. I was their first customer, and they'd been there a while. I went to the IGA and bought some supplies, there were a few people in there. Maybe there's a mall outside of town that I didn't see, and that's where everyone is. Or maybe people don't stir from their homes after church.

I called it a day when I got to Chimney Rock Resort Campground mid aftenoon. The next camping possibility is more than thirty miles away and I'm beaten & battered by the wind and hills. Another jam packed campground on a holiday weekend. In this one, everyone young and old drives around in golf carts, nobody seems to walk anywhere.

They have a "primitive" tent area that's somewhat secluded, we'll see how things go.