We packed up camp a little quicker today and were on the road by 9:00 AM.  It started out a little chilly again, but we will be wishing for these crisp mornings later on when we are driving through New Mexico and Texas, I am sure.

Kind of morbid, but we saw our first possum road kill as we were leaving our campground.  Definitely, getting farther south now.

Today was a day of interstates – holy I-79 to unholy I-64, as Jeremy has dubbed them.  I-79 was beautiful driving along the edge of the Monongahela National Forest and West Virginia’s section of the Allegheny Mountains, but I-64 just wore us down.  We had intended to cover 696 KM today and reach Louisville, Kentucky.   We thought that we could cover more distance via the interstate, but we thought wrong.  We seem to cover more distance when we have more variety in what we are seeing and the roads we are driving on.  When your mind has something else to occupy its time then thinking about the aches and pains and how much further you have to go, its amazing how far you can go and not even realize it.

Our excitement on unholy I-64 was driving through a hurricane.  We just had to drive through Hurricane, West Virginia.  It broke up the monotony of I-64 too.

We decided that we needed to shorten our route for today just after Huntington, Kentucky.  We decided to get off of I-64 and take some smaller highways and see some of those Kentucky horse farms.  Good decision.  Once again, we discovered a little treasure of roads through the back country to Lexington.  Miles and miles of fences and horses and rolling landscape . . . and fun, curvy roads too.

We found a Holiday Inn in the eastern area of Lexington. We had a traditional southern meal at the Cracker Barrel – chicken dumplings, meatloaf, sugar-cured ham, fried apples and deep-fried okra.  Yummy!   We better get out of the Kentucky fast or we are going to gain a bunch of weight.