Sunday, October 13, 2019
Paducah, KY to Hillman Ferry campground in LBL
33.9 miles
We attend 8:30 am mass at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church before riding away from Paducah. It is a beautiful stone church which was built in 1900. The ceiling inside is sky blue. There are two bell towers and the bells were ringing as we walked the few blocks from our Airbnb to church.
The ride from Paducah to the LBL area is off the adventure cycling route so at times the roads were busier than we have been experiencing. And hillier. It was a super short day, though, so I can't complain. And, we even got to stop for a just-cooked donut on the way out of town.
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| Tasty donuts to fuel the ride |
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| Kentucky Lake has a set of locks so barges can travel from the Ohio River and go through the entire lake. |
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is a huge natural area in western Kentucky and Tennessee. Look at a map and this area really stands out. It looks like a big long green space bordered by two long blue lakes. The Tennessee Valley Authority dammed up the Tennessee River to form Kentucky Lake and the Cumberland River was later dammed up to form Lake Barkley. You can imagine the effect on the people living there in 1944 when the TVA announced their ambitious plans. The Lake is enormous. Kentucky Lake is the largest artificial lake by surface area anywhere in the USA east of the Mississippi River. It is used for recreation, but its official purpose is flood control.
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| The Corps of Engineers are working on enlarging the locks so even bigger barges can enter the lake |
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| A healthy-ish dinner and some llimited edition Maple Oreos for dessert |
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Hillman Ferry campground has over 350 campsites and they are almost all full. It is fall break --again? --still? Do Kentucky children ever actually attend school? They are riding bikes and enjoying campfires with their families tonight. We leave that nice flat area by the river and head to the Land Between the Lakes.  |
Monday, October 14, 2019
Hillman Ferry to Piney Campground
50.3 miles
The ride on the one and only road through the center of the park is lightly traveled and perfect for cycling as long as you love going up and down hills. One very surprising feature of the LBL is the buffalo and elk prairie preserve. We can't ride through that because the park regulations allow only enclosed vehicles on that road. The rules say no motorcycles and we assume that means no bicycles either. That's fine with me. I don't want to be pedaling beside a herd of buffalo.
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| lunch stop |
These Bison bison were right along the main woodlands trace (in a fenced pasture) so we got to see some buffalo after all!
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| lunch fare |
We have a nice picnic lunch in one of the many picnic areas and continue up hill and down all the way to the south end of the park. By the time we get to the Piney Campground both Tom and I are very tired of riding. We are happy to get showers and eat our FABULOUSLY DELICIOUS dinner of hoppin' John. We even have some red wine and crackers and cheese. I think we have this camping thing down.
Camping-style Hoppin' John
Cook 1/2 pound bacon
saute onion and finely chopped pepper in the bacon grease
add a can of Bush's black-eyed peas
season with cajun spice mix and tomato powder
made some instant rice and stir that in the pot with all of the above ingredients
Enjoy
We had a nice lakeside site where we could watch the fish jumping. The coyotes and foxes were calling all night long. The campground host delivered firewood to our site. He told us he was a motorcyclist and understood the difficulty we would have carrying a big bundle of firewood.
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