August 2, 2018
Booneville – Hindman
107 km (67 miles)
1579 m (5179 feet) elevation
4:45 moving time
5931 km (3686 miles)

After a quite cold shower in the dark we had a pretty good night sleep in our tent under the shelter roof behind the church in Booneville. We did not put the fly on the tent so we could see some fireflies lightning up the grass and the trees. A bit romantic 😉

Today we had not our longest ride but with some steep hills. We did not want to start the day too early because of the morning fog. It’s better to be seen on the road when the shoulder is non existent 😕 Had some breakfast at the diner in town. Now we are witnessing that in this area smoking inside restaurants is still allowed, not Monika’s favourite 😧

The traffic was for the most part Ok, not to heavy and still we have not had to share the roads with coal trucks. After we left Booneville we noticed more houses that need maintenance and some cleaning. Still there are some big (even huge) well maintained houses but smaller, run-down houses are more noticeable. What is most striking is the amount, of what seems to be rubbish to us, laying around or piled up around the houses.

Unfortunately we saw some syringes lying around by the road. It adds up to what we have been told about the drug abuse problems in this area 😐

The people we meet and talk to are, like before, very friendly and give us warm smiles and good wishes for the road 😁

The landscape is beautiful and in a way it reminded us off our trip into the rainforest in Vietnam, every inch smothered in green colors. You can see some kind of vine ivy that creep in over everything by time. It crawls up the trees, out on the street and up and over the houses. Often making beautiful sculptures.

Cycling today was fine but the hills take a lot of energy and knowing that next day will be the same or even more challenging was for a while today not so appealing but we got over it and now we have under 1000 km to finish, it helps to think about that. Soon we will reach our destination and see the people we love the most 😃

We saw many, many dogs of all sizes today but they were mostly behind a fences or on leashes (probably a great disappointment for them but not for us😏) so they did not disturb us.

Had pizza for lunch and dinner – it’s fantastic that we both like pizza when the choices are not that many in those small towns of America 🙂