Day 22, to White Mills: Back in the saddle — and back in Eastern Time? - Chris Cross America

May 14, 2022

Day 22, to White Mills: Back in the saddle — and back in Eastern Time?

The Weather Channel app kept me alert to the threat of thunderstorms this morning and this evening. As I approached my destination this afternoon, I noticed very puffy and vertically shaped white clouds, as seen here above a field of what I think is young corn. The clouds were ominously noticeable.

Day 22 stats

Start: Mammoth Cave National Park

End: White Mills Volunteer Fire Department, White Mills, Ky.

The Daily Progress: 48.26 miles

Elevation gain: 2,625 feet

Ice cream flavors: N/A

Dog chases: 2. Luckily, neither was a close encounter.

Lodging expenses: $0! Thanks, White Mills Volunteer Fire Department! (Actually, $5 donation, which they said will go to the White Mills Crusade for Children.)

Food expenses: $23-ish. Included sunscreen.

Day 22 highlights

First ferry ride of the trip! It was comically short. As in, someone decided to just keep running a ferry here rather than build a bridge?

As you approach the ferry, this vaguely scary sign greets you before you have any idea what it actually means. The sign reads: "Road ends in water." The road curves to the left in a heavily wooded area, and there is no indication at this point that you are about to reach a ferry.

Ahead, we see a car being ferried across the not-very-wide Green River just outside Mammoth Cave National Park.

Fun side note: Before starting this trip, Dani pointed out to me that Blue could have been named something hilarious that referenced the fact that he is the carrier of Christopher. Note that the origin of the name Christopher is essentially "Christ carrier." So the carrier of Christopher could be named ... Christopherpher — or just Pherpher for short.

You see where this is going: Today we had Christopher and Pherpher's first ferrying!

Clearly, I'm losing it with all this time traveling alone.

Or maybe I lost it ages ago and all this blog writing is just the first time anyone is seeing this deep into my psyche.

Yeah, it's totally the latter. That Pherpher joke has been in my mind for weeks.

Okay, back to business: The ride today was fantastic. I'd been trying to work around the thunderstorm forecast and it worked out perfectly. Rain dampened the morning but stopped in time for me to pack everything up and leave before 10 and not have to worry about more storms until tonight. I made it halfway without needing to stop. The hills were gentle and rolling, just enough to break things up and force me to put in a little effort now and then. I was cruising.

Food options are slim in this little stretch of Kentucky. In the town of Upton, the only place on the map that seemed to qualify as a restaurant advertised tanning and takeout food on the same sign out front — as in, in the same phrase: "Tanning and Take-Out." Um, if you put it that way, I'll take my chances at the small grocery store instead. Luckily, the grocery store had a deli.

I made it to my destination with hours to spare before the evening storm. Tonight's home is the White Mills Volunteer Fire Department, which I have all to myself so far.

I've set up my sleeping pad and sleeping bag on one of the tables inside the firehouse. It's basically a large garage with four bays, which house a Chevy Tahoe, a pickup truck and two fire engines. To the right is a doorway into a kitchen. Not shown is the large TV and the bathrooms — with a shower! Score!

Oh, and somehow I wound up back in the Eastern time zone again! Time zones appear to be a county thing, and today I traveled north from Mammoth Cave but not west, so I must've entered (or maybe returned to) a country that prefers to be in Eastern Time. So I sort of lost an hour today but will probably gain it back again tomorrow. So I can't tell if I should feel tired yet or not. I'm gonna go eat a bag of peanut M&M's and figure out tomorrow's destination.

Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 930 miles (1,497 km)

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