Welcome to Ol' Kentuck

"Welcome to Ol' Kentuck" is the hardest traditional climb east of the Mississippi and it is right here in Kentucky's Red River Gorge - we did not climb it today. Today was our first climbing day in a long time, we did a couple of easy ones (but felt hard for us), but had a blast.  Piton seems to be enjoying herself, perhaps living in a van is starting to make sense to her. The weather was fantastic today, warm but not too hot with not a cloud in the sky. 

We are in the Red River Gorge, in one of the poorer areas we've ever seen. It's hard to understand without being here, but there's people with no safe water supply and derelict trailers as homes. There are a lot of rock climbers and hikers who come for the beautiful scenery and do put a bit of money into the local economy. It's a neat place, which we'll try to show with some of the pictures below. We took a one lane tunnel to get to one of our climbing areas - we were nervous about fitting through, but had room to spare with the big van! We enjoyed some local ginger ale after returning from climbing for the day - the area is dry so the beverage of choice here is Ale 8. It's probably Ian's favourite part of climbing in KY. 

    

We cooked dinner in the van tonight - quesadillas and chicken noodle soup (for my mom quesadillas are the ones with melted cheese inside a folded wrap sprinkled with black beans). This was our first dinner in the van (last night we ate out with Meghan's Mom and Dad before leaving Westerville, OH). We slept in the van last night with all our curtains up for the first time and they were awesome! We have yet to make our bug screen for the van, fortunately the mosquitoes aren't out in force tonight. We're settling well into the van, and enjoying the adventure. 

Our plans are to stay in KY until Sunday, drive to Toronto to move the furniture out of the condo, and move it to Natalie and Brent's house in Waterloo. From there we will be pushing of for Phoenix, AZ with an anticipated arrival in Phoenix next Friday evening or Saturday morning. We are headed there to celebrate Jamie and James wedding, and are really looking forward to the festivities.

  

As a shout out to Uncle Brian, the Mayor of Grey Highlands, here's a photo of Slade Kentucky's (the nearest town to the Red River Gorge) former Mayor, who was allegedly killed in a family dispute (over drugs). It's a lot to live up to Brian, but I think you can do better for Grey Highlands...  ;)