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Shameless Self Promotion

I need your help.

Most of you know that my husband, Mike (aka Hubby), and I have a house in Maryland and a house in West Virginia. The MD house is our residence and the WV place, as I affectionately refer to it, is a getaway.

The WV place is small. It’s not on or near a lake or river. There’s no golf course nearby (we’re not golfers anyway). It’s not at or even close to a ski resort. There’s no hunting allowed (we’re not hunters either). It’s just a little place in the woods that we built for ourselves.

So why build a house in West Virginia? Because we’re motorcyclists. And the roads in West Virginia are awesome. Seriously.

Since 2005, we’ve discovered quite a few great roads. Not just in West Virginia, either. In neighboring Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, too. I’ve written about quite a few of our journeys here. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to share that information elsewhere.

ToadMama’s Interstitial Space is really a personal, general interest blog. Some of you readers are family members who like to see pics/read stuff involving the kids and grand kids. Some of my readers are primarily interested in news/pics of the dogs. Still other readers are interested in my photography. A few are motorcyclists like us who want to read about/see pics from our motorcycle trips. Truly a mixed bag.

So, if I started writing more about the motorcycle stuff here, I’d probably end up with quite a few disenchanted followers. Besides, the plan is to bring that motorcycle info to the attention of a bunch of strangers who really could probably care less about my grand kids, kids, dogs, recipes, etc.

That’s why I decided to create a new Web presence specifically for the motorcycle stuff.

More specifically, I decided to create a blog AND a website devoted to riding/driving tours of the Greater Appalachian Valley region.

Check Out My New Blog!

The Blog – http://appalachiantours.blogspot.com/.

It’s been a work-in-progress and has gone through a few different iterations.  I couldn’t decide on a look. I wasn’t sure if I should use our real names or pseudonyms. I flip-flopped between Blogger and WordPress for the blog platform. (I’ll still probably transition to WordPress after I get some technical issues sorted out.)

This was all done in my spare time, too. And I don’t have much of that, which is part of the reason why it’s been such a long process. It will continue to evolve, but I think I am ready to offer folks the basics. I’m telling you all about it today for the first and maybe last time. If you’d like to follow both blogs, cool! I’d love to have you. If you could care less about the motorcycle stuff, except general trip reports which will still be mentioned here, that’s cool, too.

Oh yeah, there’s also a companion website, which is very cool if I do say so myself.

I have a new website, too!

The Companion Website – http://www.appalachiantours.com/.

Now that you KNOW about my secret project, finally, I need your help.

I need all of you to spread the word to everyone you know who might be interested in free information about driving (car) or riding (motorcycle) tours in West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and/or Pennsylvania to let them know my blog and website are out there. It takes a long time to build a blog following. But having you guys spread the word might give me a nice little jump start.

So whattya say? Care to help me spread the word? Here are the links again…

The Blog – http://appalachiantours.blogspot.com/.

The Companion Website – http://www.appalachiantours.com/.

Feel free to check them out for yourself, too. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Don’t worry, I’ll be keeping this blog, too. I wouldn’t want to abandon you guys. That would just be mean. Right?

It’s okay if none of your friends ride, like to go for drives, or live in the area. Maybe they know someone who does and wouldn’t mind helping to spread the word.

Helping me get the word out would be super-awesome. But you don’t have to feel obligated. And I won’t ask again.

Tomorrow I will return to some regular, unscheduled posting…

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You Capture – Favorites of 2010

The “assignment” this week was not to take pictures. It was to select our favorite 10 photos of 2010 to share. Taking new pictures would have been SO much easier. Really. As I said the other day, I took more than 10,300 pictures in 2010 with my digital SLR alone (big camera)!

But I did it. Finally. It took quite a bit of time and required a plan. First, I went through lots and lots of pictures and copied my favorites into a separate folder. That was the top 65. From there, I narrowed it down to the top 25. Finally, I was able to narrow it down further to my top 10.

Remember, the theme is my “favorites,” not “my best.” What makes a photo good anyway? Does it always have to be in focus? Nope. Does the light always have to be perfect? Nope. Does your subject have to be looking at the camera? Must his/her entire face be visible? Does your subject need to be centered? Nope, nope, and nope again.

This assignment has already consumed so much of my time that I am just going to shut up and post the darn things already. Okay? Here are my favorite pics of 2010, in no particular order. Don’t even ask me to rank them from one to ten. The mere thought of having to do that has given me the cold sweats…

Go ahead, knock. I triple-dog dare you.

This is definitely my favorite dog pic of the year. I like the reflection of the sunset, but I love the look in their eyes. They are scanning the horizon, anxiously awaiting my return. It doesn’t matter if I am gone for five minutes or five days, the girls are ALWAYS glad to see me when I return. As with many of my favorite images, this one was completely unplanned. I’d actually been outside taking pictures of the sunset. When I turned to go back inside, that is what I saw. I had to tweak the lighting a bit in PS Elements, mostly to get rid of the ever-present nose prints on the glass.

Are They Crazy or What?

This shot makes me smile. Every single time I look at it. I could’ve removed the red eye, but I think that adds to the craziness. These two play like this practically all day, every day. Yes, they really are playing and not trying to bite each other’s face off. You’ll have to use your imagination for the growls. It can be quite entertaining to watch. Sure it gets annoying at times, too, like when I am trying to participate in a teleconference. But I’m so glad all of our dogs are here.

I chose this picture not because it shows off our grandchild. If that were my goal, I’d post a picture of all of them. (In fact, I’m going to cheat here a bit and give you a LINK to my favorite picture that features the grand kids.) My goal here really is to show how “favorite pictures” don’t have to be favorites because of the subject, quality, composition, etc. My favorite images are usually the ones that evoke the strongest/best feelings, reflect a certain mood, capture a particular moment, etc.

A Great Day for Soup

This picture of Joey was shot during the late Spring. Actually, I think it was Memorial Day weekend. We had made all these grand plans to take the kids on a bike ride, but then Joey got sick. I volunteered to stay behind with him while everyone else went riding. He sat for the longest time making “regular soup” with water and rocks in these containers. All I could hear were the sounds of the birds and insects in the forest, Joey’s giggles, his running commentary, and the dogs playing.

Even the weather was perfect. It was one of those moments you just want to freeze in time because it feels really, really good to be alive. When you realize wouldn’t change one single thing about your life, no matter how difficult, because if you did you’d erase all the good, too. And moments like these are definitely good. The best, actually.

Loving Nature

I like this shot mostly for its symbolism. As the caption says, I love nature. I’d rather be outside doing stuff than inside, that’s for sure. I especially enjoy watching the seasons change. The Winter to Spring change is one of my favorite times of the year. I always look forward to the blooming of the Redbud trees. This heart-shaped leaf is on a Redbud tree at the end of our WV driveway. If you look closely, you can seem some pink in the background. I could have chosen a shot where the pretty, pink flowers are in focus. But I like that the emphasis is on the leaf here. The heart-shaped leaf to be exact. You’ll appreciate this picture so much more if you click on it to see the larger version.

Details

When you look closely at stuff, you really do see so much more. That’s the theme for this selection. It really is true, too.

This image is simply a fern frond. Not real exciting, right? But if you look closely (click on the image to see a bigger version), you’ll see the intricate patterns on each leaf. The depth of field in this picture (how much of the image is in focus) is what makes the image so powerful to me. It draws your attention right into the middle of the frame and makes you look at the individual leaves. And, as the photographer, that’s exactly what I wanted you to see.

Art Interrupted

This reflectofrog shot is the perfect example of how unplanned stuff sometimes makes an image. I was trying to get a shot of myself reflected in the frog’s globe. I did. But I also got a shot of K’s leg in the foreground with her whole body reflected between me and the frog. Because I can’t go anywhere/do anything without the dogs coming along to see exactly what it is I am doing. They’re nosy like that. I don’t know if that’s a dog-in-general thing or a Brittany thing. But these three dogs of mine are VERY curious about everything. And they are rarely far from us at all. Not that I am complaining. My dogs make me happy. But it really is like having little kids around trying to “help” you do stuff.

A Picture-Perfect Motorcycle Day

This shot represents a picture-perfect motorcycle riding day in the Greater Appalcahian Valley. Blue skies. Big, puffy white clouds. Smooth, empty road winding through the foothills and into the mountains… does it get any better? If you look really close, you’ll see Hubby in front of me. I was lagging behind a bit since I was riding one-handed at about 45 mph while shooting pictures with my point-and-shoot camera. None of that craziness in 2011. This year I get to use my new HELMET CAM! 🙂

Almost Heaven

This picture is a great example of why we chose to build a house in West Virginia. Mountains. Lots of mountains. They’re no Alps or even Rockies, but you know what? We have discovered plenty of great motorcycle roads. I’ll begin sharing that info pretty soon (stay tuned for new project announcement). For now, you’ll just have to look at this picture and the previous shot to enjoy the scenery we encounter on a regular basis near our WV place. This picture was actually taken from the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.

The Kids

The kids together at Christmas. They’re not all here. Amy’s hubby is deployed. But this is the first time in a while that Shannon, Amy, and Eric have all been together with us at the same time. (That’s Eric’s girlfriend, Kelsey, on the right. She’s a real sweetie.) It was nice having them all here relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. I was enjoying it, that’s for sure.

Jaufenpass!

And finally, Hubby and me right after climbing the Jaufenpass on motorcycles during our tour in Europe. I’m with my favorite guy on the trip of a lifetime. What more could a girl ask for?

There’s no way for words to describe what it felt like to ride on the Jaufenpass. For me, this was my favorite part of the whole Europe trip. It was fun, Fun, FUN! The road was technical, but not so technical that I couldn’t race through it. I think I smiled broadly the entire way, feeling like I was riding in a video game. (Wanna know what it felt like to ride the Jaufenpass [pronounced hoff en pass]? Watch the first 60 seconds of this YouTube video [not mine]. Be sure to leave the sound on so you can hear the engine scream. It gets particularly interesting around the five-minute mark as the road climbs higher and higher. You get to see what it feels like to encounter a bus coming in the opposite direction and how I wasn’t exaggerrating when I said the road hung onto the side of the mountain.)

That trip was by far the most fun vacation ever. And we’ve had some pretty cool vacations. It wasn’t just the motorcycle part either.  The tour was awesome in every regard, but the week after the tour we got to visit two different sets of friends in Switzerland and Belgium. Even if we hadn’t seen more really cool stuff, seeing our friends would’ve been enough to make me happy.

Anyway… that was my 10 favorite pictures of 2010. I can’t wait to see which ones other people chose. If you’d like to see, too, visit Beth’s You Capture page.

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A Little Bit of This and That

Believe it or not, I do think of y’all often. And I challenge myself constantly to come up with new and interesting stuff that will tickle your fancy.

Shot by Cobalt123: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/

Coming up with new and original material is not an easy thing. So I try to keep my eyes open for interesting stuff to photograph.

Sometimes I am successful. Sometimes not.

I did not shoot that cool frog photo (at left). I discovered it this morning when I was looking for clip art with a “conglomerate” theme.  It come from Cobalt123’s Flickr page. There are some other cool images there, too. Be sure to check out his stuff if you have time.

The images I have managed to capture are slightly less unusual than the conglomerate rock frog, but equally as cool.

Some of them are, anyway. In my opinion. 🙂

So, without further ado, I present you with my December conglomerate of images. In no particular order.

How to piss off your OCD grandchild.

Joey, our youngest grandchild, is a bit obsessive about organization. He gets it honestly (from his mother). She gets it honestly, too (from Hubby). The organization gene was apparently suppressed in my family’s bloodline.

Just like I’ve always enjoyed toying with his Mom a bit (messing up the alphabetization of canned vegetables in her kitchen cupboard is one example that comes to mind), I like to mess with Joey. He’d pushed all of his refrigerator magnets into one large group at the top, front of the fridge. He had to use a step-stool to reach. I thought it would be fun to see how long it took him to discover the message I left for him.

That evening, I got a call from Amy who immediately said, “Someone wants to talk to you.”

It was Joey. He didn’t say “hi, G” or anything. He launched right into the angry voice (picture a face LIKE THIS ONE) and said, loud and plainly, “Don’t. MOVE. My. Magnets.”

It’s okay though. It took me about three seconds to convince him that I HAD to do it because I wanted to leave him a message so he’d know that I love him and was thinking about him.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, it was less than 3 hours after he got home that he saw my little note.

Spinach Quiche

I’ve explained the dinner rotation thing we do at my house several times before, so I won’t go into it in too much detail. The week before Christmas was Shannon’s turn. It’s nice having someone new in the line-up. Especially since she likes to cook lots of different stuff. It’s like eating at a new restaurant (a good one!) five nights a week.

By now, she knows most of our various likes and dislikes, too. Notice I said “most.” That’s important. Because Shannon actually made me eat quiche, which I’ve always hated. It’s a texture thing. The thought of biting through what to me has always felt like thick, curdled eggs was enough to turn my stomach. The whole way to the table, I kept telling myself, “Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit.” Which is why my mind was a bit too preoccupied to think about taking any “before” pictures.

But, because I’m a big girl (as in mostly grown up), I tried a small piece. And guess what? It was actually very good. You may have already figured that one out from the picture above though. Shannon said the secret is the spinach-to-egg ratio. Keeping the amount of spinach high helps with the texture tremendously.

Speaking of being a big girl…

A FOUR pound, six ounce tin of shortbread.

Now, I LOVE good shortbread. But I never buy it because it’s expensive. I could probably splurge and fork over $1 per ounce (about the going rate for these things) every now and then, but it’s the principle of the thing. Essentially that’s about $1 per cookie. So, when I saw this four pound, six ounce tin of Walker’s shortbread cookies at Costco for less than $19, I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven. That’s 73.6 ounces of deliciousness that I just could NOT pass up. Heck, I even went back and bought a couple extra boxes to keep in the pantry. It’s a good thing I saved money on those, ’cause I’m going to need to buy some bigger pants soon.

Big-ass Grasshopper

I can’t remember if I shared this picture before or not. I saw this huge grasshopper on one of the plants in front of our house. Months ago, obviously. But I like it, so am sharing it here, too.

Cadbury Christmas Balls. Yum.

I actually took this picture with the theme of holiday magic in mind. Because after my family quickly devoured one bag of these bad boys from the candy dish, more “magically” appeared. I tried various angles. There’s just something about this next shot that makes me smile…

Snowman guts.

Doesn’t it look like Santa and the one snowman are staring down at the other snowman who appears to have been eviscerated with all of his green, red, and white innards showing?

Maybe it’s just me.

Afternoon "nap."

Hubby took this picture a couple of months ago. K and Belle like to sit on Mama’s lap. It makes it sort of hard to use my laptop computer, but I have to let them bond with me sometimes, right? I wasn’t actually sleeping. How can you be so sure? No one ever takes pictures of me unless I say, “Person, will you take a picture of me?”

My new desk frog.

This frog desk organizer was a Christmas gift from the grand kids.  It’s tacky as all get-out, but right up my alley. He can hold an assortment of binder clips, pens and even a roll of tape. How’s that for handy? It makes for a pretty funny picture, too.

Speaking of funny pictures… there’s this foot-long hot dog place sort of near me that I only drive past occasionally. It sits at an intersection where it never fails that I catch the red light. Every time I sit there, all I can do is stare longingly at the front of the store and its mascot, which is prominently displayed on the curb in front of the place, because I always seem to be by myself. Or with Hubby. And he would just think the whole idea too stupid to bother with.

Last night was different. I needed to exchange some Christmas gifts and Shannon was with me.  I caught the light, as usual, but this time when I looked at Ann’s my mood brightened. Shannon was there and could actually take my picture!

We did the clothing exchange first then on the way out of the mall stopped at Ann’s for this…

ToadMama with the Ann's Dari Creme mascot. Finally!

I love cool (fun!) statues like that. So I can hardly resist getting a picture with as many as I can. I love hot dogs, too, and theirs are awesome. But I wasn’t even slightly hungry at the time.

Yes, I could have just asked someone to take the picture for me, but I was afraid saying “will you take a picture of me with the giant, foot-long hot dog” to a total stranger might launch me into hysterics.

It's not what it is, but what it represents.

This key fob was a Christmas present from Hubby. What it “represents” is his final agreement that yes even though there are cheaper bikes out there, we deserve to get ourselves the ones we REALLY want.

Really, really.

This orange motorcycle has my name all over it.

These were the motorcycles we rode in Europe and LOVED. The mountains of West Virginia ain’t The Alps, but there are plenty of fantastic roads and just as many dirt roads we have previously been a bit hesitant to explore. (You try riding a 900-pound, bulky motorcycle through dirt and gravel once. It’s a bit disconcerting to say the least.)

I don’t know what’s more exciting… knowing I’ll be riding a new motorcycle soon or thinking about all the cool new gear I get to buy to go along with that new bike. There’s a certain image we have to uphold you know.

A new look for ToadMama?

Speaking of new images… the other night while we were at a friend’s house, having a grand old time if I do say so myself, Shannon mentioned the latest fashion trend to us. Jeggings.

Jeggings = stretchy denim leggings

While doing the exchange thing last night, we saw this sign. I just HAD to get a picture to share with y’all.

Meg and Mama

Here’s another shot I HAD to share. It’s not the most flattering self-portrait, but Meg hung out on my lap for the longest time Christmas night and I wanted to take a picture. She’s my crazy, old girl. (The dogs call me “Mama”, not ToadMama. They have a hard time with the tee sound.)

And speaking of Meg, I’ve also been collecting pictures of her in her bed again. I’ve never seen one dog lay in so many different positions! But I’ll save those for another time. This post is already WAY too long.

If you actually made it to the end, be sure to leave a comment to let me know. Please?

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Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

Now that I’ve mentioned this place several times, I guess it’s about time to share more of the pictures. Although the motorcycle vacation was primarily about the ride (NOT the destination), the side trip to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill [Kentucky] was all about destination.

Shaker Village is on the US National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places. That means, if you’d like to know a brief something about why Shakers would interest me, READ THIS. Actually, I’ll tell you why they interested me, because I knew Hubby would get a kick out of seeing the old, restored buildings AND examples/demonstrations of Shaker furniture-making. That Hubby of mine is not only very handsome (and smart, and funny, and great at baking cinnamon rolls), he’s also very good at woodworking. I should emphasize VERY GOOD. Not just ’cause he built us a house (I was the unskilled laborer), but because he can actually make furniture and other stuff, too.

In the “other stuff” category is this workbench, which he built to help with the furniture-making process.

Hubby's Workbench (scanned image)

Then there’s the very nice TV-surround thing he built in our family room.

Hubby's hand-made entertainment center.

And here’s our awesome (and huge) bed.

The king-sized bed Hubby made.

Since this picture was taken, he’s also made two matching night stands. Our room is no longer Southwest-style either. I still like that look, we just got tired of looking at it. It’s much more contemporary now. Anyhoo…

I knew Hubby would like the whole Shaker thing. So when I stumbled across the Shaker Village Web site, and saw it was not too terribly far away from the mountains, I thought it might be interesting. When I saw that there is an inn on the premises — The Inn at Shaker Village — I knew we HAD to go. The very brief description I saw of the place was enough to convince me.

“The Inn encompasses more than 70 guest rooms, suites and private cottages spread throughout 13 restored 19th century buildings. Inn accommodations feature Shaker reproduction furniture, hardwood flooring and private baths.”

That’s how I tend to do my travel planning. It’s never all about me. I try to find stuff everyone can enjoy. Of course, learning there was yet another element to Shaker Village didn’t hurt my decision either…

Critter Alert!

You know how I like critters. Especially cows. I just KNEW there’d be cows. That didn’t influence my decision a bit. 🙂

Cool Bull That's Not Really a Bull

There was even a bull! Sort of. He looked like a bull. And was grumpy like a bull. But one of my coworkers informed me yesterday that my “bull” isn’t a bull at all. It’s a steer.

But back to the furniture thing. I should have said “woodworking” because there’re also things like this spiral staircase.

Staircase

That image above is just a snapshot. Again, this wasn’t a ToadMama photography trip. It was a vacation for Hubby and I. So I just took a quick pic and moved on. If you want to see some cool pictures of the complete TWIN SPIRAL STAIRCASE, this link to some Flickr search results of other peoples’ pics might work.

Workshop viewed through window.
Some examples of Shaker style and functionality.

Of course all of the buildings featured those iconic Shaker peg rails. Even I knew what a Shaker peg rail/rack was. What I did not realize was that the rails went entirely around every room. What I also didn’t realize is that the peg rails are far more than coat racks.

Check out the multi-holed candle sconce in that last image. You can’t see the hole in the top of the clock because of the little placard, but the hole is there. Why? So the clock or candle holder in this case can be moved to wherever they are needed. The clock is set at a fixed height, but with five holes in the sconce, it can not only be moved around the room, but the height can be adjusted up or down.

Hubby's attempt at filling all of the pegs.

You’ll note that the little cabinet, which houses the TV here, also has those holes/hangers. So even wall cabinets can be moved as needed.

Hubby had more fun pretending the pegs were all for hanging general stuff, though. He did a pretty good job filling the majority of the pegs in our sizable room (about 20′ x 20′ with room for two double beds).

Our room was in the West Family Sister's Shop.

As you can maybe imagine, there were lots of interesting things to see.

Shaker buildings.

I just love the clean lines of the buildings. And the colors, which are reminiscent (maybe even the reason for) colors typical of “primitive” country decor.

Goat.

I just loved the dark, blue-black color of this outbuilding and MANY of the barns we saw throughout this particular region.

Cool rock walls.

I forgot to mention the rock walls. Rock walls fascinate me. I’m not sure why. Other than the fact that I’ve always found rocks interesting AND love building stuff using Lego’s.

Did I mention the cows?

Friendly Cows

The cows were either just very friendly OR they liked having their picture taken. Or both.

I commented to the same co-worker who let me know my bull isn’t a bull, that she’d have to tell me why this cow has horns (those teats are made for milking! Remember the Nancy Sinatra song…”those teats are made-for-milking; that’s just what they’ll do; one of these days those teats are gonna shoot milk over you?). I thought only boy cows had horns.

My guess WAS that this was a steer (that’s a boy cow, right?), until I learned that my “bull” is a steer. SIGH.

Can you tell I haven’t spent much time on a farm?

Since I’ve already admitted to my lack of real farm animal knowledge, can someone tell me why this one sheep (or are they goats) appears to be spotted?

I think these are both sheep. It's hard to tell, though, because they're naked.

There’s a pretty good restaurant at the inn, too. It was the best dinner we’d had all week.

If you enjoyed the few Shaker Village pics I shared here, be sure to view this Shaker Village Slideshow on my Flickr site.

And don’t forget to COMMENT if you enjoyed today’s post. An awful lot of my fans are very quiet.

Come on, people. Give me some comment love!

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Middlesboro to Pleasant Hill

I have to say, I was a bit upset to walk outside and see FOG on Wednesday morning. Not because of what it would mean for riding, but because we were in Middlesboro to see the Cumberland Gap (a pass through the mountains). But all the mountains within view of the hotel were obscured by FOG.

See those lovely mountains? No? That's because it's FOGGY.

Initially, I’d hoped to leave around 9:00AM. I wanted to spend some time in the national park and have lunch at Cumberland Falls while still allowing enough time to reach our destination before nightfall. Since it was foggy, there was no need to hurry. So we strolled next door for breakfast. It just so happened there was a Hardees mere feet away from our hotel. That is CLASS, right?

Hardees was a very popular place.

Notice who else was there? Here’s a closer look…

The town mortician enjoys Hardees biscuits, too.

After a leisurely breakfast, we moseyed back to our room to pack up our stuff. We were both on a motorcycle. Just how much stuff could we have to pack?

Yay for luggage trolleys!

That’s a lot more stuff than one would think, isn’t it? We really were happy to have a luggage cart available. That’s a lot of stuff to schlepp back and forth.

By the time we were finally ready, the fog had cleared. So off to the national park we went.

My bike after a couple of rainy days riding through coal country.

Take a look at how dirty my poor bike was. Know what’s scary? My legs were just as dirty. My cool, assless leather chaps need polishing!

In front of the visitor's center at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend at the park, so we hurried off to the Pinnacle Overlook, which is 2,440 feet above the valley floor.

Cumberland Gap
Cumberland Gap
Hubby at the Pinnacle Overlook.
Cumberland Gap

See what we would have missed if the fog hadn’t cleared?

The mountain view included three states: Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

After a nice, long look at the Cumberland Gap, it was back on the bikes for about a 160-mile ride to our final destination. After a nice little cheese-and-crackers lunch at Cumberland Falls.

ToadMama atop Cumberland Falls.
Looking down river from atop Cumberland Falls.
Hubby heading to the foot of the falls.
The happy couple at Cumberland Falls.

I think we have more pictures of the two of us during this vacation than ever before. Probably because now I have a point-and-shoot AND my big camera.

Anyway…

We had our lunch, finished a fabulous run through Daniel Boone National Forest, and a splendid ride through the flatter part of Kentucky, ending around 5:30 at the Shaker village.

That’s where we transformed from mountain-riding bikers into somewhat civilized folk.

The hallway outside our room in the West Family Sister's House.

I’ll share more Shaker Village pictures soon. It was a VERY cool little place. If 3,000 acres is little…

Don’t forget to check out the map of the day’s ride.

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Pipestem to Middlesboro

Our second riding day dawned cool and cloudy. Oh boy!

And we had about 250 miles to ride…

We didn’t hit much rain. In most places the rain had passed through just a short time before us. So, while we weren’t being rained on, the roads were wet. And we were still riding through coal country.

Before I elaborate, check out this picture. We were stopped for road construction. The type and quality of this road is pretty indicative of what we experienced for most of our ride. NICE. But that’s not why I took the picture. I snapped this particular shot so I’d remember to ask Hubby what was up with the weird water tower thing you see here. Sometimes, water would trickle out of the top, then it would gush. Trickle, gush, trickle, gush. Why would a water tower do that?

Weird Water Tower Thing

We sat there for about 10 minutes. It was boring. So I also took this picture of Hubby while we waited.

Hubby says hello.

As for riding through coal country on wet roads… have you ever driven in places like Western MD and PA where they use cinders on the icy roads instead of salt? City slickers who complain about salt making their cars dirty have nothing on folks who drive through places that use cinders. That stuff is DIRTY. It is, after all, the non-combustible material that remains after coal has been thoroughly burned.

Driving through coal country on wet roads is like driving through roads covered with cinders. Dirty. Check out how my windshield looked after only about two hours!

Yes, that was another construction stop. There weren’t too many of them as it might seem from the pictures I’ve taken during those stops. Those just happen to be good photo ops.

We're about to enter Kentucky.

Speaking of good photo ops… that Hubby of mine is pretty good. Even though all my picture taking does drive him crazy at times, he still knows when to stop for some shots. Like in front of this “Welcome to Kentucky” sign.

Uh oh.

The sky had been alternating between blue and ominous all day. At lunchtime, it was mostly blue. So we stripped off all the rain gear. A couple of hours later, as we crossed some pretty high mountains on US-119 south of Whitesburg, KY, we were rethinking that decision. But our road could have been leading away from the storms, right?

Is that blue sky?

Yes, we could have been heading for an area with blue skies.

Cool road!

The angle of that above shot is not contrived. The read really was that steep. You could hear trucks (big-ass coal trucks, remember?) laboring to climb the mountain.

Me alongside the cool road.

I really was hoping we’d miss the rain. I mean, there were quite a few patches of clear sky.

Look at all those mountains!

As you’ve probably guessed, we did get rained on a bit more. But that was the last rain of the trip. Woo hoo!

We were happy to make it to Middlesboro safely and looked forward to the next day which is when we planned to visit the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

Here’s an interactive map of the day’s route if you’re interested.