Day 31 - Charlotte

Miles today: 326

Miles total: 10,759

Rode along the Kanawha River on US60 through Gauley Bridge.  Then south on US19, a bit of US64 through Beckley, and WV-20 along the New River.

Picked up US460 to Pearisnurg and then followed VA-100 to Dublin ... followed by 3 hours of interstates to Charlotte.

Fin.

Day 30 - Charleston WV

Miles today: 401

Miles total: 10,433

First stop today was the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville KY, to visit The Colonel.

When I pulled in I was stopped and told that motorcycles aren’t allowed in the cemetery.  But the security folks were super nice and proceeded to give me a personal tour in their car.  My “tour guide” Chris pointed out that Colonel Sanders’ grave was just two doors down from members of the Beam family (as in Jim Beam).  Seems to me there’s some sort of cosmic symmetry in that fact.  

He also drove me to the other side of the enormous cemetery to visit Muhammad Ali.

Next stop was the state capitol in Frankfort.

The unusual fact I learned about this capitol is that the four murals surrounding the rotunda were part of the original design of the 1910 building but not actually installed until 2010.  The reason? The original artist died on the Titanic. 

I also determined that, until recently, this one building simultaneously housed statues/busts of 1) Abraham Lincoln, 2) Jefferson Davis, and 3) Colonel Sanders (Jefferson Davis moved out about a year ago).

Next stop was Pikeville KY, the heart of Hatfield-McCoy country.  The Big Sandy Museum was closed but, after quite a bit of riding around, I eventually found the grave of Randolph McCoy.

 

I like how the monument has “Famed Leader Hatfield - McCoy Feud” etched into it. Presumably if you went through the trouble to find the grave you’d know who Randolph McCoy is.

Last stop was the capitol building in Charleston WV.

I give it bonus points for the nice gilding on the dome.

Day 29 - West Baden Springs IN

Miles today: 415

Miles total: 10,032

Riding I-74 was unavoidable today ... it went pretty much exactly where I needed to go (for the first couple of hundred miles anyway)  and there aren’t any obvious interesting alternatives. I rode it to near Peoria, then exited and took back roads from Pekin to around Champaign.  From there I was back on 74 until just past the Indiana border.

After that it was a complicated zigzag through Terre Haute and rural southwest Indiana. Started running into issues again finding gas. Had to stop at 4 stations before I found any, and when I did I was lucky because I was the last one to fill up before the station closed its pumps.  I heard there might be gas shortages this weekend ...

I got to within 15 miles of my destination only to find the last critical bit was closed. Which forced me to take some more bad local roads (reminiscent of Napa).  At least I was able to dodge the rain for another day.

The West Baden Springs hotel is a pretty spectacular building. The rooms surround huge atrium beneath a 200 foot diameter dome - the largest free-spanning dome in the US when the hotel was built in 1901.  It held that record until the Charlotte Coliseum was built in 1955.