Day 26: Dry Ridge, KY to Madison, IN

Distance: 56.8 mi, Climbed: 2,018 ft
Completed: 979.8 mi, 50,434 ft

Joanna and I enjoyed meeting Ron before we headed out for our ride. Now in his 80s, Ron told us that he used to ride 50-mile days back in California. He was at the hotel with his wife Linda and their friends Kent and Debbie. It was fun hearing about Ron’s riding days—one more reminder that the love of being on a bike doesn’t really go away.

Today, we had the pleasure of spending the first half of the day riding through Kentucky farmland. The past two days in Kentucky, we have ridden on mostly quiet country roads with little traffic. The scenery has been some of the best we have had on the trip.

The one challenge in Kentucky has been the dogs. We have passed many homes with several dogs alone in the yard without a leash. The dogs are excited by the bicycles passing by and often sprint into the road to greet us. It is very nerve racking as you are never quite sure if they will run into your path or even attack you. We had an incident yesterday where a fierce-looking dog was barking loudly and blocked the road as we arrived, and we had to wait for the owner to bring the dog inside.

One of the both fun and scary moments today was when we saw a goat on the side of the road. The goat had a leash, so it clearly had run off from someone’s farm. As we were watching the goat, several dogs came out and started barking at the goat. The goat stared them down. It was a standoff. I half expected them to charge each other. Fortunately, a car came down the road forcing both the dogs and the goat to retreat.  

But, we still needed to ride past the dogs. I was a little behind, so I watched as the dogs ran out to greet Joanna. Let’s just say Joanna has a healthy fear of dogs. She was terrified as four aggressively barking dogs surrounded her bike as she rode through. She kept moving and made it through safely and for some reason the dogs seemed less interested in me. Crisis averted.

We made it to Indiana, the eighth state of our trip! We have been trying to get a good picture with a welcome sign as we enter each new state. When you enter a state on a back road, there is often nothing. We have had to be a bit flexible. We have used town signs, historical markers, or pretty much anything we can find that says the state we just entered. The nice part about entering Indiana on a more major road is there was a proper welcome sign for a picture. Thank you, Indiana.

The road to Madison mostly followed the Ohio River. We were initially greeted with smoke stacks. Not the best start to our Indiana journey. The smoke stacks were soon followed by miles and miles of RV parks along the river. I have never seen so many camper vans. Does everyone in Indiana own a camper van?   

As the road moved away from the river, we were eventually treated to beautiful fields of bright yellow flowers. It was getting late in the day, and the sunlight made the flowers look almost florescent. Beautiful. We finished the ride on a small road next to the Ohio River with great views before pulling into our hotel right on the water.