Kentucky Coal Miners country

Aloha Everyone,
After not being able to connect to the internet I went and did laundry and tried again with success. Boy the last couple of days has been rough. The weather has been thunderstorms for three days not all day but last night it stormed heavily. We had to camp at a gas station because we could not make our destination before dark. So Ted at the BP station said we could camp in the yard next door and he would leave the bathrooms open for us. Then after dinner with Leigh and Margaret they camped with us too we went back to the gas station and another man came up and said he owned the land we were camping on but said no problem we could camp there and pee in the woods as he had a nice path cut. Somehow the bathroom door got locked so we were without a toilet till 6am. It stormed like mad last night this morning everything was wet! We have been doing some killer climbs like 10% to I'm not sure but possibly 14%. They look straight up and keep going. We had to ride on the highway this afternoon as well which was tough, big hills to climb with the coat trucks flying past us. This part of Kentucky is really sad, garbage in the rivers and roads and most of the people don't care. Yesterday I stopped counting after 8 dogs had come out after us only the first one really scared me as he was a huge German Shephard and he was running down the hill towards us. I rode for probably 20 miles with the pepper spray in my hands. Most of the dogs though just want to run along side and bark and carry on. We thought things were going to get easier once into Kentucky but this place is equally hard. Everything I own is wet. I have taken up to peeing on the side of the road because ticks are a major problem around here and I don't want any ticks where the sun doesn't shine so I just do it! These folks pump gas while smoking a cigarette even saw one guy leave his truck running and smoking while pumping can you imagine? We have a couple more big climbs tomorrow but having this nice bed to sleep in tonight should help my morale. I will try to post some pictures.

Keep the Rubber side down,
Lisa