Why this ride
Open upland riding with long sight lines and varied gradients. It also links naturally to Eastern Kentucky foothills.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Kentucky Route 32 and 7 Highlands
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 135 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 1 h 57
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Access context
Check seasonal gates, park access and state 511 notices before publication.
Seasonal context
Apr-Oct
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Morehead
Morehead is a college town dropped into the folds of eastern Kentucky, where the Appalachian plateau begins to break up into steep wooded hollows. Morehead State University fills a good part of it, which gives the place more coffee, more students and more life on a weeknight than you might expect from a county seat of seven thousand people. Interstate 64 passes just north, but the town itself sits in a narrow valley along Triplett Creek, with the Daniel Boone National Forest closing in on almost every side.
Read the complete Morehead write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Morehead sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Sandy Hook.
2. Sandy Hook
Sandy Hook barely registers as a town, yet it is the county seat of Elliott County, one of the smallest and most rural in Kentucky, and the courthouse square is about the whole of its centre. A few hundred people live here in the valley of the Little Sandy River, surrounded by ridges of second-growth forest, tobacco barns going grey with age and small farms scraped out of whatever flat land the hollows allow.
Read the complete Sandy Hook write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Sandy Hook comes up 31 km in. Next is West Liberty.
3. West Liberty
On the morning of 2 March 2012 a tornado tore straight through the middle of West Liberty, flattening much of the old downtown, the courthouse square and a good part of the town around it. Riding in today, you see the result of the rebuilding: newer brick, newer roofs and a town that pulled itself back together with help from all over the state. It is the seat of Morgan County, a place of a few thousand people set on the Licking River where the valley opens a little among the eastern Kentucky hills.
Read the complete West Liberty write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
61 km in you reach West Liberty. Next is Paintsville.
4. Paintsville
This is the beginning of the Country Music Highway. US 23 runs north to south through Johnson County, and the state named it for the extraordinary number of singers who came from the counties along it, Loretta Lynn first among them. She was born in Butcher Hollow, just outside Van Lear, a few miles from Paintsville, the coal miner's daughter of her famous song, and her childhood cabin still stands up the hollow. Chris Stapleton grew up nearby too, in Staffordsville, which tells you this corner of Kentucky is still producing voices.
Read the complete Paintsville write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Paintsville, late in the day.