403 Miles.
After a fitful night's sleep, not unlike those of Christmas Eves a long time ago, the morning came early for both Bo and Jim.
Jim woke up at 4:00, packed his bike and then played with his dogs until it was finally time to fire up the bike and head for the rendezvous point for our planned 8:00 departure.
Bo also woke at 4:00 but forced himself to stay in bed until 5:00, at which point he loaded up his bike and then played Yahtzee on the computer until it was time for him to leave.
Finally, at 8:00 we met at the Bloodworth Motors parking lot. After a quick hello, we paused for a photo op. Scott, Bloodworth's Service Manager, snapped a departure photo and the trip began. When we can figure out how to get the photo off of Bo's digital camera and onto the computer we'll let you see it.
Onto Briley Parkway and then I-65 North. We rode into Kentucky, and the trip, by virtue of reaching another state, because official. We stopped a little past Bowling Green for breakfast. Any attempt we thought we might make at eating well on this trip disappeared in an orgy of biscuits, sausage and gravy.
We reached Elizabethtown , Kentucky and veered onto the Bluegrass Parkway, on route to Lexington. We reached Lexington and, with assistance from our trusty GPS, managed to find Interstate 64.
We decided to find a meat-and-three restaurant for lunch and thought we had scored when we found the City Buffet restaurant. Thoughts of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn bread, etc. were quickly replaced by cashew chicken, moo shu pork, sesame noodles and won ton soup. Oh, well.
After 403 intestate miles we reached Charleston, WV, and checked into the Wingate Inn. A trip to the Los Agaves restaurant completed our day.
The friendly Wingate Inn staffA couple of photos from day 1:
Dinner at Los Agave
Los Agave's interior designer's finest work