May 6th was our final day on our epic journey to explore the wild west of America. It was the longest road trip any of us had ever been on, and today it ends.We spent last night in Lexington Kentucky, and today we would drive through Kentucky, across Tennessee and finally arrive in North Carolina.
Since we are so close to home, our route mostly took us through territory we've been in before. Despite this we still managed to get some adventures out of it.
When you think of Kentucky you may think of the Kentucky Derby. The thrill of the horse race, the shortness of the jockeys, the prissiness of the spectators, the stupidity of the gambling. The Derby has it all, and lucky for us we missed it completely.
What we did see was the only other thing Kentucky is famous for... KFC. In Corbin KY is the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken that Harlan Sanders ever opened. It is still a functioning KFC restaurant, with a museum bolted onto it.
After reveling in the history that is KFC we raced across Tennessee as quickly as possible.
Our last adventure occurred just outside of Asheville NC at an abandoned water pump station. We pulled off the road and hiked 500ft into the woods to check it out. There is, of course, a geocache there as well (which is how we discovered it). There are several old buildings that still have the pump equipment in them, overlooking a really nice mountain river.
After spending a few minutes exploring the buildings we got in the car and arrived home at 6PM.Some (hopefully) interesting facts about our trip:
- 21 days on the road
- 6100 (approx) miles driven
- 168 caches found, averaging 8 per day.
- 18 different states, including 11 that none of us had ever been in, and 15 that I had never cached in.
- 4 free nights at hotels from "frequent traveller" points
Zeke was a great traveller, and seemed to love being in the car more and more each day. We are glad to be home, but we had a blast on our trip. I would definitely do it again.
To finish off this series of posts is the photo gallery from our trip:
Cheers!
