Berea, KY

So it may have taken us longer than we thought, but ten days later, with two days rest and we are through the Appalachian Mountains! We slept in a barn last night, with Smokey the colt and George the calf to keep us company. Everyone has been sweet, we've been given places to stay, homemade spoonbread in jars, good hot meals, and about 200$ in donations, without ever asking for anything. The people of this countryside are sweeter than peaches. We seem to have made it out of coal country, out of the poorest county in the country- which happens to have the worst tasting water. Everyone buys water, why? The coal mines have made the wells really sulfuric- but the city water(highly chlorinated) doesn't taste any better. The streams are all running dry due to a drought, and there is an abundance of trash- both burning and not. We met nice man today who was pucking up trash from the side of the road.