To Louisville, Day 2 - Enforced Rest Day

I headed out from Frankfort this morning and immediately realized I was not going to reach Louisville until the next day. My thighs were sore, my body and mind were still exhausted. I hadn’t given myself enough rest from yesterday’s exertions.

I made it out to a gas station/truck stop and began asking about places where I might camp for the night, as well as going through a couple of couch-surfing websites. I got no response, and searches for nearby campsites proved fruitless. So I asked the manager of the place if I could pitch a tent somewhere. She said no, it was against rules, but to try a different one down the road and see what they said.

I found the next place, another truck/gas stop, and asked the first employee I came across about the possibility of camping. “We’re not supposed to let people camp here,” she said. Then, after a moment’s pause: “Tell you what. You didn’t hear this from me, but if you go way out past the trucks, there’s an RV parking lot, and let me tell you, nobody--nobody--parks their RVs there. There are big fields of tall grass on either side, and if you go far enough into the grass and pitch your tent there, you’d be hidden well enough to spend the night.”

I took my bike behind the field of semitrucks, feeling extremely small walking amongst those monsters yet somehow completely at ease. There was the RV parking lot, completely empty as promised, a snake of asphalt winding through tall grass from the truck lot to the road. I walked my bike down the lot, eyeballing about halfway between, and parked my bike.

That’s when I started to panic. Of course, it’s easier to read about veteran cyclists who do this on an almost nightly basis, but doing this for the first time myself was honestly nerve-wracking. The what-ifs flooded my brain: “What if I get caught? What if the police find me? What if one of the truckers saw me and rat me out?” Eventually, though, everything sorted itself out. Nobody would catch me because I would be hidden, not only by the grass, but by darkness itself. If the police caught me, which they wouldn’t, they would give me a place to stay. The truckers have better things to do with their lives than worry about a lone cyclist making no impact on anyone else’s life.

So I left the bike to walk back to the gas station and bought a bottle of water that was actually cold, thanked the employee for the tip, and set off into the grass to try my hand at stealth-camping for the first time. After setting up my tent and crawling inside, I went to sleep easily; the only sight was the enormously tall lights to allow the truckers to see their way through the lot, and the only sound was the hum of engines.