May 21 - Lancaster OH to Lexington Ky

We grudgingly left our luxury accommodations in Lancaster after the continental breakfast thing, loaded the bikes and headed toward Georgetown KY where Toyota has a plant that makes Camry cars. They have a tour which I am very interested in and so that was the goal. As it turns out, they we were too late to get the tour today, and we may or may not get to go tomorrow, depending on how many other people sign up. But goals are good, so we told Daves GPS we wanted Georgetown, and it obediently got us here. Because the GPS is set for shortest distance, it finds some of the most interesting back roads and side streets, and today it treated us with some really really out of the way, back roads, all of them at least 70% paved. This corner of Ohio gets more rolling as you go east or south since we are heading back toward the Appalachian Mts. Everything is green, the corn is planted (they do no-till planting, which means no plowing, but seeding right over last years corn stubble. Took us a day or two to figure that out but we saw the tiny new corn sprouting between last years rows. There were some roads that you could swear were in Vermont. I have to say, I enjoy the flatter, slightly rolling country we are leaving. The towns are small and self contained and seem healthy and happy. The other thing that became obvious is that over a period of just a few hours, the accents went from good old northern Yankee / Ohio to down south thick y-all accents. Amazing. By the time we crossed into Kentucky, the accents were thick. The other thing we picked up today were horses. This part of Kentucky is rife with big old horse farms with beautiful big estates and fences everywhere.We are just down the road from where the Kentucky Derby is held in Louisville and you can tell that this is big business here. 

We called ahead for a room and the buzz is the big hail storm they had last Wednesday and the one that is just hitting tonight, like right now!!. Should be a stormy night. Tomorrow we have to call to see if we can get a spot at the Toyota plant for the tour.
We are not sure where to go from here on out. I need to be back by next Weds so maybe we will start swinging back northeast. Maybe West Virginia, maybe north back to Ohio. Right now, we are going to watch this storm come in. Big excitement in Ky.