Indiana

Another day, another state. Lately we’ve been crossing them at the rate of one a day. Our first stop of the day today was at the Indiana Welcome Center to, of course, pick up another state map. We are getting quite a collection of them.

My first amusing sight of the day was a horizontal tank painted to look like an ear of corn. Yup, I’m nearly home. One of my homes anyway. I’ve had several over the years. I spent fifteen of those years living in Illinois and that is corn and soybean country. So a tank painted to look like an ear of corn feels like home to me.

Next I saw a truck with a sign on the back saying, “Caution. Show chickens inside.” Show chickens? There really are such things? I mean, sure 4H kids raise chickens and take them to the fair to win prizes but an entire semi-truck of show chickens? It made me wonder what type of show. Do you suppose they do tricks like the Wonder Dog does?

We went to a Waffle House for lunch. When Dave starts talking about waffles I know we are headed someplace where he can get one soon. So, I started thinking what I would order when we went there. I decided I’d have one of my favorite breakfasts that I rarely indulge in:  two eggs over easy mixed with hash-browns and bacon with a side of whole wheat toast with jelly. So, imagine my surprise when I heard myself order eggs scrambled with cheese, hash-browns, bacon and toasted raisin bread. At least I got the hash-browns and bacon right. Although, Dave ate half my bacon because that turned out to be too much food for me. It was tasty, though.

When we crossed the Big Blue River I noticed it was green. The color green, not the ecological green. I think green rivers probably aren’t too ecologically sound.

The billboard for Cracker Barrel said, “Table for two. Coming right up.” But the picture that went with it was of a checkerboard. You know, the ones they have on their porch so you can play checkers while you wait for your table which is, obviously, not “Coming right up.”

I saw a water tower with the words, “Indiana. American Water,” on it. I wonder if that was painted in response to the huge popularity of Perrier a few years ago. Then I wondered why a city would care if it’s citizens didn’t drink the local water. Wouldn’t that mean they’d have to process less of it? Then I remembered that back when we had a house our sewer bill was a percent of our water bill. If the citizens aren’t drinking the local water the percentage cost of sewage processing would go up and people would complain about that. So drink locally, folks.

A beer billboard said, “Best taste deserves protection.” Many beer drinkers nowadays associate protection with condoms. So, your beer deserves a condom?

Another beer billboard showed a picture of a six pack with the label “Stimulus Package.” Be careful how much beer you drink; it can affect what you stimulate. Which would never have occurred to me if we hadn’t just been told your beer deserves a condom.

We ran into a flight of bugs which splattered all over our windshield. Without even knowing what I was thinking about the beer ads, Dave asked me if they were Love Bugs. Even if I knew what a Love Bug looked like I wouldn’t have been able to tell if those on our windshield were them from the little evidence they left.

Fortunately, we drove through a down pour shortly after that which washed the bugs off the windshield. Yay!

In the few minutes we drove through that rain the temperature dropped 22 degrees. It’s now a clean, cool world out there.

Unfortunately, we didn’t stay there. We drove on into hot and humid. Then on some more into Illinois to Kickapoo State Park where we will spend the next two nights.  

Yes, we are hurrying towards home. But we are just 20 miles from Urbana, Illinois, where our daughter will be tomorrow. And she is one of our homes wherever she is. Since she’s in the process of gathering her things to move to Maine, we won’t get to visit that home as often as we would like to do in the future. So we are NOT going to pass up this chance to spend a day with her now. Everything else can wait another day.

TTYL,

Linda