Best Road Close to Home

[Stichill_imp]

I've recently become enamored with a road I'd taken for granted. I live in the exurbs, which is a rural area that is gradually being encroached on by suburbia.

In general, heading anywhere north is a recipe for getting into increasing levels of traffic, while heading south takes you out into the countryside, but you have to pass through a few congested areas due to the presence of an interstate highway bisecting the region. How nice would it be if there was a road close by that was a great ride with very little traffic?

It finally dawned on me that such a road would be KY 177 Decoursey Pike between the city of Covington in the north and the town of Butler in the south. 177 runs along the west side of the Licking River. Since the Licking is largely unbridged between those two points, there are few crossroads. Since few people need to travel north-south on the east side of Kenton County, there's little traffic.

The road has a gently winding, meandering character. It's in the lowlands, so it's generally tree-lined and shady...welcome now that the weather is warmer.

It's the perfect road for me to ride after work. I head over there on Wolf Road, turn north and go to Dairy Queen in Covington / Latonia where I can get a chili cheese hot dog (colloquially a "cheese coney") and an ice cream cone. Then I head back south and enjoy the open road as soon as I leave the city limits. It's a 24 mile stoplight-free, stop-sign-free run to Butler, where I loop over onto 3185 and head north on 17 to home. Alternately, I can run a similar route in reverse after dinner, in fact doubling the miles by completing the run in both directions.

Great road for clearing the head.

[url=https://goo.gl/maps/nuS97n82fNcuFJs48]KY 177 Decoursey Pike




Perfect rest stop at the north end of the route.