Chambersburg to Lexington

The route:

The eastern third of this route (mostly Maryland) is magnificently scenic; the middle

third (West Virginia) is pleasant; the final third (Kentucky) is best suited for a nap,

unless you're at the wheel, of course.

Camera Woes

As we explained yesterday, our brand-new Samsung camera didn't react well to the roof leaking on it, but fortunately--we thought--we had our trusty--we thought--old Canon Sure-Shot with us so we could keep a visual record of a road our earlier travels had shown was one of the most scenic in America, the Route 68 National Highway in the Maryland panhandle. Alas, when Mary F. tried to take a picture, it froze like the cops had guns trained on it. I had a half dozen AA batteries in my briefcase, and a couple more in the glove box--none of them worked. When we crossed into West Virginia the Visitor Welcome Center had none, either. In fact, we didn't find any until lunch at Shoney's in Frameville, by which time the really photogenic stuff was past.

Anyway, here are a couple views from the internet:

A milestone for our MPV

In Charleston, we hooked a right onto I64 and headed for Kentucky, but before we got there, in Huntington, WV, actually, our reliable little tin can had a milestone of her own, her odometer flipping from:

...to:

Car carnage

About half way through New Jersey, peaking in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, is the roadside slaughter of deer, easily the most visibly striking of the tons of roadkill along any major highway. But we wonder, why deer? Skunks and armadillos we can understand. They have defense mechanisms that protect them from natural prey, and they think in their little brains that they're invincible, having no idea of how a few tons of metal at highway speeds can change the concept of invincibility significantly. We can understand possums. They aren't very fast, or deep, thinkers. We could understand crows, because they spend a lot of time picking through the tastier portions of highway carnage, although we hardly ever have seen one of them fall victim, because as birds go, they are very, very smart. Deer have big ears to listen for danger, big eyes to spot movement, and no reason at all to leave the tasty grass beside the highway for the tarmac, but...smack! A thousand of them a day decompose beside our highways.

Miscellany

Some fat guy was nice enough to fill our car with gas (Mary F.

didn't think I'd print this picture but hell, I have no pride left):

Hey, I got a beautiful woman to go to a hotel with me. Note the impatient look?

We'll miss election day while we're on the road. So we've already voted, by absentee ballot. As you may have guessed, we didn't vote to allow the foxes back into the chicken coop they decimated while George W--the first moron president in American history--presided over the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, the great divergence, from the middle class to the corporate barons.

Tomorrow we'll spend the whole day in the Lexington area--with camera batteries in hand. See you then.