The people don't look any tanner in Kentucky than they do in any other state, which makes this phenomenon even stranger. In every town and along most all of the country roads are tanning salons. Now what makes it even stranger is the fact that the tanning salons are a part of stores where you just wouldn't think a tanning salon would be a part of. For example, we saw one building that advertised movie rentals, pizza, and tanning. Another advertised antiques, country goods, and tanning. Another sold fresh produce and tanning, another advertised a an auto body shop and tanning, another sold bait and tackle, guns and ammo and tanning, and probably the most unique pairing was a day care, a consignment shop and a tanning salon.

Several hours into the day, Alex and I stopped in Moorehead to take a break. We found a neat little park that overlooked a dried up river and the surrounding mountains. It was a very pleasant spot to sit and relax in the shade for a while. When we were ready to leave, Alex looked at the tree with the low hanging branches that provided our shade and joked that he would do some pullups to give himself an upper body workout. Without hesitation I said, "I'll give you a dollar for every pullup over twenty that you can do." Alex laughed. "Alright, I'll give you two bucks for every one you do over twenty."

"Two bucks for every pullup over twenty?'

"Yup, but you have to give me a buck for everyone under twenty."

"Hmm." Alex thought about it for a while. "What happens if I do twenty?"

"I'll give you two bucks." Alex thought about it some more.

"Are you gonna write about this on your site?"

"Of course not, don't worry about it."

Alex gave it more thought, "How about we bet breakfast?"

"Alright, we'll do it for breakfast." With that Alex began doing pullups. Now since I told Alex I wouldn't write about this on my site, I won't tell you how many he did, but I will tell you this, if the original bet stood, he'd owe me twelve bucks.

That night, we arrived at Carter Caves State Park. It was another resort park, so we had showers and there was another lodge that served an all-you-can-eat buffet. When I only had one plate, Alex wondered why I wasn't eating that much and if I was feeling okay. I just told him I was saving room for breakfast.

After dinner, we played some minature golf (the state resort parks of Kentucky are great) and then came back to our campsite. Camping next us, was a group of five people, one guy and four girls, all teenagers. When we walked past their site, they called us over to sit around their campfire. We introduced ourselves and they did the same, prefacing their names with the fact that they were hillbillies from West Virginia. Apparently, they all worked together at the McDonald's in Huntington and decided to go camping for the weekend. Patrick, the one guy then said, "this is the first weekend I can leave West Virginia without supervision."

"Got yourself in a little trouble?" I asked.

"Man, never ends. Just stupid stuff, lots of fights and things like that. First weekend I'm free in years. So where you guys coming from?"

"I started in Oregon and Alex joined me in Illinois."

"Oregon? When'd you start?"

"June 19th."

"So what, are you guys rich or something?"

"No, just been saving up."

"Man, I tried saving to pay off all my fines, but can't do it. I just don't make enough money. One day I'd like to do something like that. I don't think I'll bike, I'll probably sail around the world. I love sailing, that's my thing. I used to rollerblade. I was really good until I messed up my leg and my ankle."

"Wipe out?"

"No, my mom got mad at me once, so she ran me over with her car. Haven't been able to blade since."

"Ouch."

After talking with our new hillbilly friends for a while, Alex and Idecided to go back to our site to play some cards. A half hour later, we heard some commotion coming from the bathroom about 200 yards away, then some girls started to scream and went running off in the distance. Alex and I quickly looked over to see what all the ruckus was about, and then immediately jumped from our picnic table to a safe distance about 20 yards away. Two skunks were walking around our site and one walked right under our picnic table.

Hearing the noise, Patrick came running over to see what was going on. When he realized it was a skunk, he backed up with us. Apparently after collecting his thoughts, Patrick picked up a rock. "What you got to do is chase that thing back into the woods."

"Don't scare it, it'll spary," Alex warned.