Dieter.us

A lot of this last week was impacted by the rain from the hurricane and it made me realize how much I really depended on the great weather I had in all previous weeks. The week started with a two hour drive to Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, KY followed by a 15 minute wait in the downpour to enter the distillery and grab a bottle of the daily special (Blanton's) for a good friend and bourbon connoisseur. The distillery tour guided us through many of the various buildings and everyone was soaked to the bone when we finally could taste the precious golden fluid. I had planned to continue south back into Tennessee and return to NC via Smokey Mountain NP. It was clear this would not work and instead I headed east to Cumberland Gap NP where TN, KY and VA meet to see some more caves and spend the night. The next day I tried to head into NC via Bristol and Damascus, but the flood damage was too great to get through and I spend another night in TN on a lake close to Bristol. In the end I took

Honestly, it's been a more difficult week. There's been too much driving and not many exciting highlights. Clearly, I've been spoiled. I don't want to make northern Texas look too bad, but the drive from Amarillo to Wichita Falls was not very eventful, although driving 75 on a road that in NC would be 55 at most was helpful. Yes, there were a few State Parks.... and I finally saw a rattlesnake and scorpion (in the campground sink) and best of all I got to closely inspect an oil well. It took hundreds of miles in Minnesota and North Dakota for the forest to turn into prairie. It seemed this was almost instantaneous driving from Texas into Oklahoma. Very strange. Driving on US-40 in Oklahoma, Arkansas or Tennessee looks just like North Carolina. Also, the humidity and crickets at night are back. I tried to do some sightseeing. Went to the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, saw the presidential library in Little Rock (disappointing), the Little Rock Nine museum and h

The red sandstones in the west, the black rocks at the Black Canyon and the aspen groves just turning from green to bright yellow really made Colorado come true to its name - Colorful Colorado! After a nice mountain bike ride in Moab - maybe the rider and bike could've been in better shape - I went back to Colorado and stayed the night at Colorado National Monument close to Grand Junction. Very beautiful place. Next day a ton of bikers went through that area as I was heading south to the Black Canyon National Park. The photos don't do this park justice. It is definitely worth seeing! Then headed east and north towards Leadville where I camped two nights in the "wild" at Twin Lakes to summit Mt. Elbert the second highest peak in the lower 48 behind Mt. Whitney in California. Then drove past Copper Mountain where I biked some and Fresco where I visited the brewery and ate fantastic asian fried chicken. I stayed for two hours at Hot Sulphur Springs in varous pools of dif