Woke and took a very long and leisurely time getting ready to leave Elk Garden Church hostel. So pretty here, both the church and the surrounding terrain, and there were nice oatmeal and biscuit sandwich breakfast options provided, along with a few granola bars for the road. This place was so clean, and so open and trusting - you enter, have no supervision, sleep wherever you want including inside the church service area itself if you want, which we did. I also stayed here 12 years ago on my 2010 TransAm, on my last night together with the puppy (“Buck”) I’d found in a horse camp two days prior and carried with me on the bike until I stayed here and an Elk Garden church parishioner adopted him from me and I continued the ride…so this place has always hee special to me and it was cool to be back again, this time with my wife and my new dog! After setting off on our ride, we were threatened with rain on and off all day and wore Gore-Tex a couple of times but didn’t really get rained on. It’s difficult sometimes knowing whether to ride with waterproof gear, or to take it off and put on sunscreen and hope it doesn’t rain. The weather has just been changing constantly, but at least it’s warm 65-80 degrees so we won’t die if we get soaked in a sudden squall. It was another day of Virginia climbing - Big A mountain was a big one, but once over that we could tell we were getting closer to Kentucky as the terrain changed to more steep and narrow hollows (they pronounce it “hollers” here) and the increase in poverty was apparent. Council VA, though, was an oasis in this mountainous desert with a long, gorgeous, perfectly-manicured river park with baseball fields, kids’ play structures, and long narrow stretches of grass for playing and picnicking. We took a brief rest stop at the Council high school picnic area at the far end. After passing through Haysi, VA, we had to climb up uP UP UPP toward Breaks Interstate Park which is the dividing line between VA and KY. The short climb out of Haysi was so steep that Vanesa had to stop and walk her bike up the hill…first time on the TransAm so far, and we’ve seen some nasty hills. This one was brutal but somehow I made it up riding. I got to Breaks Park first and waited in the grass behind the “LOVE” sign (Virginia is for Lovers so we see big LOVE signs now and again on the route). We rested in the grass together before descending, tired and ready to make camp. We really wanted a motel room after the hard recent days of hills and rain and heat, but we are in remote country and there was only one motel. And it was empty and creepy as hell. Neither of us wanted to stay there so we trudged on to our second option: TimeOut Pizza in Elkhorn City. They let cyclists camp there, either down by the river or up on their covered restaurant deck. We chose the deck because of both the high chance of rain and the guarantee of wet sleeping gear from dropping below the dew point even if it didn’t rain. The deck was dirty, like they never clean it, but the pizza was delicious and there were very kind people eating out on the deck that made conversation with us and even offered us help should we need it the next day as we pass through areas where they live. A Harley guy with a cool, black, bejeweled tophat. Tommy Anderson and his girlfriend Kelsey. (Tommy wants to invent an underwater blanket because not everyone wants a wetsuit but everyone wants to be warm in the water…I THINK he was being funny, but couldn’t totally tell….LOL?!?!). We drank 3 Pepsis (no Coke in this whole town - there’s a Pepsi plant nearby that provides a lot of jobs and they only drink and sell Pepsi here to support that. We surreptitiously stripped and rinsed our salty bodies in the river down the embankment from the restaurant, took some pics around the river/restaurant/corner of town where we were. I walked around alone some - trash everywhere. All kinds of non-street-legal quads, motorcycles, farm truck, old golf carts driving around. No sign of police. Feels kind of lawless here. Poor, and dirty, with some friendly people but some that seem really wary of strangers. It’s kind of interesting, sad, gross, and a little scary at the same time. I’m a bit on edge in Eastern Kentucky. After the patrons left the restaurant we rolled out our sleeping pads and bags and laid down to sleep - but we put our tent groundcover on the floor first because it seemed the restaurant had never once cleaned it. And I slept with my pocket knife by my side, for which Vanesa laughed at me. We’re getting up at 430 to get out of here as early as possible for some nice morning riding.