June 8th, 2019 / (0km/0mi)
More rain and more bad weather forecasted. Again. We decide to get a rental car and to “jump” east to get around the wet.
Getting the rental car turns out to be quite challenging — everything is booked out due to summer holidays. Next rental car spot that has a car for us is in Louisville, KY, which is a 1.5h drive with a taxi away. Expensive rain season. But I finally get a car and pick up Tim at our motel in Berea.
The day turns out to be better than forecasted. Sigh. But I can’t change plans every 5 minutes. So now we’re up for a car ride to Charlottesville, VA. That’s further out to the east than I had wished. We’re basically cutting out 8 days of ride out of the original plan. So we are way to early in the schedule – but who knows how weather will slow us down in the coming days – and we will simply extend the ride to the coast and ride to Yorktown instead of directly north to Washington, D.C.. That’ll add another 3-4 days to the route and we make it to the official end of the TransAm route as a side effect. If the weather turns better and we still have time, we can also go a bit further south on the Atlantic Coast trail before turning around and heading towards the original route up to New York. So we will be able to fill the time meaningfully and bike-riding. Which is why we are here actually. Somehow the sitting around in motel rooms and waiting for the weather to get better drives me mad…
But for today, we only drive to Hazard, where we avoid the most cheesy motel in town (with terrible reviews online) and make it to the second worst place in town (Quality Inn). The nice place (the third and only remaining option (Hampton Inn)) is booked out. Somehow I am also looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again.