Richmond and Berea

Kentucky – Saturday, December 15

I had ended up in the town of Richmond, and thought I’d start with a little walking there before driving on. Once again there was a nice downtown area which led me to some nice residential areas, which led me to Eastern Kentucky University and we walked all around that campus, which was pretty quiet. I’m guessing most of the students had headed home for the holidays. So we ended up with a nice long 4.8 mile walk for the morning. They had a Gulf gas station in town, and I don’t see too many of those – reminds me of traveling as a kid! Then I headed for the town of Berea, but stopped along the way at the Richmond Battlefield. It was sprinkling on and off, but not enough to prevent me from being outside. We walked on the paths of the battlefield, and learned it was the site of one of the most decisive Confederate victories. The huge numbers of soldiers involved in these individual battles continues to amaze me. This one had 9000 Confederate soldiers fighting against the 6500 Union soldiers who were sent to stop them. Almost 5800 of the Union soldiers were either killed, injured or taken prisoner during questionable decisions by the commanding officer – it’s difficult to comprehend those kinds of numbers. They had a memorial plaque to honor a large group of soldiers from Michigan. We nearly finished the day’s walking there, but with heavy rain in the forecast for tomorrow, I thought I’d drive on to Berea to get a little walking in for tomorrow’s miles. Berea was also a great walking town. It’s a town known for artists and their studios, and that’s the part of town I started in. I left Tula in the car for this walk – she had been off-leash at the battlefield and had run and scampered all over the place, and I figured she had had enough. I headed into the main part of town, which had a lot of pretty Christmas lights. Berea College was right there, and I walked through that too – not a big campus, but a pretty one. I walked way out along one of the residential streets and that led to a relatively short bike path, and back to the residential street. I was worried the rain was going to start coming down harder and had forgotten my rain jacket, but it let up again. I really enjoyed the walk, and got in another 3 miles – making it another 11 mile day. But that only leaves 6 for tomorrow in case it’s rainy.

Then, even though it was 7:00 at night, it was time to take care of my donation-of-the-day. Berea had a food pantry, and they also had a wish list of canned fruit, fruit juice, vegetable oil and tuna. They said they would be happy to take donations at any time of day, and indicated there was a large box and shelves out on the front porch of their food pantry. I drove by it to make sure there was indeed a place to leave things, then went shopping. I felt kind of strange leaving bags of groceries on the front porch in the dark, but I just had to have faith that they would still be there Monday morning (or maybe the church people would find it on Sunday) and if not, then someone really needed it, so that would be okay too! So this was new for me – just dropping something off and not talking to anyone.

At this point I got a bite to eat and drove west for a couple hours – it was nice to just be in the car!