Hodgenville - Harrodsburg [back]

Right outside of Hodgenville, almost directly across the street from where we spent the night, is president Abraham Lincoln's birthplace. The grounds of the National Park are immaculately kept, as there is a nice visitor's center and a large stone monument on top of the hill where his log cabin originally stood. The steps leading to the monument as well as the monument itself are both somewhat similar to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Inside the monument stands a log cabin that supposedly contains some of the original logs from Lincoln's birth home. While you definitely don't get the feeling of "wow, Abe Lincoln ran around in his diapers on this floor," the park is nicely presented so you can at least get an idea of how rugged the Kentucky wilderness really was back in the early 1800s. If you're ever driving down Route 61 in Kentucky and see a sign for Lincoln's birthplace, its worth stopping for.

Ten miles past Lincoln's birthplace, is Lincoln's childhood home. We weren't originally going to stop, but it is literally right off the road, so we decided it couldn't hurt to take some pictures. This time there wasn't any memorials or much of a visitors center, it was just some wooden fences, a parking lot, a picnic area, and a log cabin. There were a couple of park rangers sitting around eating lunch, waiting for someone to come by, so talked to them briefly about the building. The one park ranger gave us a brochure, told us that the cabin was a reproduction and that the parks service actually just took over the property in November, and then began to tell us about his adventures on his Harley Davidson. Apparently he really likes his motorcycle and likes to ride it all around Kentucky, but never on interstates, just on backroads. He doesn't trust truck drivers. When we left, he wished us good luck and said "see you later, hopefully not on the side of some truck."

That night, we made it to Harrodsburg, the first settlement in Kentucky. It had been a fairly long day and it was hot, so we decided to get a motel room. While we were checking in, the lady who worked in the office told us that there was another biker.

"Is it a young guy with long, brown hair?" I asked.

"Yup."

"Is his name Greg?" Greg is the guy we camped with two nights ago at Rough River Dam State Park.

"I believe so, I'll put you guys in the room next to him."

After we got settled in our room, Alex gave Greg a call and invited him to dinner. Apparently, Greg rode over 100 miles the day before and was pretty tired today, so he took a short day. It's funny how sometimes cross-country biking is just like the "Tortoise and the Hare."

During dinner, Greg told us stories of the guy and girl he met the night before at his campsite. Alex and I had actually met them the day before and spoke briefly with them at a gas station, but Greg got the full lowdown. They were both from Arkansas and were recent graduates of MIT (sounds like an oxymoron, huh?). The girl had planned to ride from Arkansas to Boston before she started her new job in October with another friend, but at the last moment her friend backed out, so this guy joined her instead. Both the them were riding on bikes that were given to them, they hand made their panniers and their bottle holders, they carried no tools, about 20 pounds of gear each and were camping the entire way, hoping to never pay for a campsite. They've only paid for a few meals, since a lot of the time, people just feel so sorry for them that they give them free food, and they snack on the 10 pound bag of licorice that they brought with them.

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