4/3/2024 - Tuesday
The more astute among you has already said "wait - publish date says 8:25pm on 4/2." Yes, I'm getting a head start on tomorrow, because it's going to be lots of driving & intermittent blogging. I won't blog so much to neglect my fellow traveller, but hopefully I can voice-to-text some along the way & upload later with pictures.
For now, a few more prep pictures from camping planning. This was a bit yesterday & a bit today - There was the camping breakfast prep:
The "let's get all the climbing gear in order in case we're able to do that thing!" prep:
Then there's "let's pack THOR as much as possible before we can add overnight bags, fill cooler, & another person's bags to the packing... (you didn't know that a Prius is also a Truck in disguise? Bwa ha ha!)
<next up.... ACTUALLY on Wednesday, 4/3>
So - not going to bore you so much with Wednesday-Thursday travel. There was a lot of car talking and not a whole lot of observations.
Drive from Richmond to Lexington (Go Wildcats!) was in 2 stages and a couple of added stops.
Ate a bowl of Cinnamon Chex & made coffee for breakfast before getting on the road.
First stop was in Tudor's Biscuit World in Lewisburg, WV around noon - I got a sausage, tomato & mayo biscuit, plus they were "giving" away add-on sausage & gravy biscuits for $1 (which I ate later).
Our next planned stop was at FrosTop in Huntington, but we had been hearing some funny sounds from around the wheel and made a stop. I knocked on the hubcap a bit (this may have been before Tudor's) and heard a bit of a rattle, which I took to be a rock or something that may have gotten lodged in (possibly a screw since I'd had the car serviced on Tuesday). We got in the car & kept going after that, with no sounds again until another hour had passed.
Then the low thunder started up again. I said wheel, my codriver said maybe something under the car, I said maybe stick or something (they always get caught up from my driveway), then I eventually got back to "WAAAIIIITTT a minute!..... " 5 years ago, shortly after I'd bought my car there was a big hurricane that came through Richmond and I'd gotten off the Powhite (with my very SHORT Prius) through some water & onto the off-ramp before the Bridge. This event had pulled off the underskirt, which I'd gone through a couple rounds of home repair at that time to re-attach it without going through the greater expense of buying a new one. It's worked well for 5 years. HOWEVER, if a recent mechanic (see earlier comment about yesterday's servicing, inspection, oil change) had been negligent about handling said skirt......
So, we stopped & checked. That was EXACTLY what it was. So I pulled out the Gorilla Tape, slapped the skirt back onto the car, and BOOM! ready to go... no more problems.
Back on the Road. On to Huntington (about 3pm I think, where we got the BEST ROOT BEER EVER! And a Root Beer Float, just to make it the best of the best. With a hot dog. If you've never been to FrosTop, you're mising out and you should make it an absolute must-stop on your drive west on I-64 as you exit WV.
Very sorry I don't have more pictures.
Very sorry I don't have more pictures.
Going across Kentucky continued without much event, but due to the delays & food stops, what should have been a 9 hour trip ended up being closer to 10.5 hours. Good thing we hadn't planned to do the full trip in one day (Google says it's 11 hours without stops - and interestingly says it's quicker if we go through Tennessee).
Hotel for the night was at the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Lexington. Which might have been more fun if it had not been so late in the evening (8pm) when we arrived. Instead of exploring the hotel's modern art gallery (though we DID take advantage of the complementary Shot of Angel's Envy Bourbon), we went out looking for food.
The first place we went to looked really fabulous - from cute tavern-ish outside to the very progressive menu inside. Highly recommend trying Ethereal Brewing Public House if you get a chance - because their new menu was so popular they were ALL OUT OF FOOD, so we sadly dragged ourselves out to another pub.
So our next stop was Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint. Which was fine and had a good selection of burgers - we just found ourselves missing the Richmond Beer Scene. We're spoiled here in Richmond with the microbrew culture. Facts.
FABULOUS sleep at 21c - Nothing beats a comfortable hotel bed. I don't know why. But they're always better.
Thursday 4/4
Lexington to Paducah, KY
Started with Starbucks (and one-half of a Tudor's sausage gravy biscuit) and went over to Ashland, Henry Clay's Estate. We arrived about 10:30am and were disappointed to find that the next one hour building tours didn't start until 11:30. We wandered the grounds and outside buildings, then got on the road to the Peducah KOA. The route ended up being about 4.5 hours, which really didn't make sense. We were re-routed from Louisville direction on a longer southern route. Later we found out about the tornadoes that went through Louisville, which helped make sense of the re-route.
Temperatures were COLD! Damn Cold. So, off to bed and trying to keep warm in sleeping bags.
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