Day Two

So far, the weather's been awesome-so far! It's 60s, 70s, breezy! We stopped a fair amount yesterday as the landscape was rather boring, but the weather so very nice. The pups are adjusting to the drive well, but still not liking staying in a hotel.

Before I go on about yesterday's drive, I must re-visit West VA as it gets such a bad rap! I'm still in awe of the Dupont facility-all the white pipes, ramps, cross walks, bulbs in an otherwise dark, grungy town. There are also these amazing steel bridges everywhere..all sorts of shapes. I love bridges & it's nice graphic art in that landscape. I wish I could stop & take pictures, but there's never a good "pull over" stop.

And Huntington, home of Marshall College (for those of you that saw the "We Are Marshall" movie) , is a beautiful town. We went to Ritter Park before heading out and it was a lovely area. It reminded me of Richmond. The area was like the fan with this creek & park running thru the center. The houses were of the Ginter Park era- all very nice! Everyone was out walking dogs, running & biking as the weather was incredible. Anyway, I was impressed, especially after yesterday's mundane drive.

Kentucky and Indiana have nice rolling hills, but pretty bland view, at least, from the interstate.

Ok, it wasn't all bad...as you get close to Lexington, the view changes dramatically with all the gigantic horse farms. One thing that stood out are the barns. In eastern Kentucky, the barns are like children's drawings of houses. "A" shape roof, rectangle body with a different sort of construction from what I could see. They weren't painted, but covered with some dark coating. They were skinny with one opening & sometimes 3 stories tall. What looked so different is that they had siding/shingles that were hung vertically-3 rows & the bottoms of each row jutted out a bit..maybe to do with the weather?? A lot of these sadly were falling down.

 Then the barns looked more like what you see in Virginia- very traditional & then whoa- the horse barns. They looked like churches with all their steeples or maybe the old style schoolhouses...they were huge & white & pristine. It was lush & green there as they've had lots of rain- ponds were overflowing, creeks full.

Louisville was pretty neat -again loads of cool bridges. Saw the Galt House on the river where my parents stayed for a Dairy convention, I believe. I remembered they loved their stay there.

And a very lit up Joe's Crab Shack on the waterfront. Now I wanna know what kind of crabs are in the Ohio River???

Then the flat landscape started again...loads of trucks on the roads...not many towns after Louisville.

Now I'm really weather watching...bad rain storms are around St Louis, but after that, all looks good! Am picking up my very fun brother in law , Mark, at the Kansas City airport tonight. He's been gracious enough to fly from Portland, MAINE to ride with me to Portland, OR. Or did he have a gun put to his head? My family did not want me traveling by myself, so I'm not sure what transpired, but I'm very grateful!