For the second day in a row we were up at 7 AM yesterday. What the heck is that all about? We need to nip this in the bud right now!
But we had a lot of miles to cover and we wanted to get on the road. We pulled out of Diamond Caverns RV Park at 8 AM, headed north on Interstate 65. About 20 or 30 miles up the road we crossed into the Eastern time zone and lost the hour that we had picked up when we left Florida a week ago.
There was a lot of road construction, and in a couple places the two northbound lanes were separated by concrete Jersey barriers for a few miles at a time. I usually don’t like driving near those things because it can get tight, but in this case the lanes were nice and wide and we had plenty of room.
Terry loves old barns, and anytime she sees one she tries to take a picture of it. There sure are a lot of them in Kentucky and Tennessee!
As we approached Louisville signs were announcing major road construction ahead and there was a detour that would have added about 30 miles to our trip. Most of the traffic was getting off there, but we decided to stay right on the main highway through town. It was tight in a few places, but overall not bad, and before we knew it we were crossing the Ohio River into Indiana.
The road construction continued all the way north to Indianapolis but we made decent time. There was a real bottleneck where I-65 connected with I-465 in Indianapolis and it took a while to thread our way through all of that, but before long we had skirted the eastern side of the city and were on US Highway 31 headed north.
We made a potty stop at a rest area somewhere along the way, and then a stop in Peru for fuel, and arrived at Elkhart Campground a little after 5 PM. We’re not from Indiana, but whenever we pull into this place it feels like we’re coming home. We have been stopping here ever since our first year on the road 17 years ago, and owners Bob and Gita Patel treat us like family. Gita greeted us with hugs and made us feel welcome, and then we moved to our campsite.
It’s been two years since we were here and they have made a lot of changes. They are constantly expanding and improving the campground, and there a lot of new full hookup sites, a large fenced in dog run, improvements to many of the existing sites, and they’ve added several more rental cabins. Their pride in ownership really shows through.
It had been another long, hot day of 375 miles. The evening news said the temperature in Elkhart was 93° yesterday, but it’s supposed to cool down a bit over the next few days. That’s more than welcome!
We were both really hungry, so once we were parked and hooked up we drove to El Maguey, Terry’s favorite local Mexican restaurant. Our friends Charles and Chris Yust from C&C Insurance have been working a rally at the fairgrounds in Goshen and met us at the restaurant. It sure was good to see them again and to visit over dinner. We were all four worn out, so we didn’t sit around and talk like we normally do after we finished eating, but I’m sure we’ll get together again while they are in the area.
Back at home, Al Hesselbart came over to welcome us and we spent two or three hours visiting and catching up. By then, our eyelids were really getting droopy. I’m sure we’ll see more of Al while we are here.
We plan to do a whole bunch of not a whole lot in the next few weeks. I need to get the new issue of the paper out, and then get to work on my next Big Lake mystery novel. Miss Terry is itching to get back to her loom, and we always have lots of friends stopping by when we are here at the campground. Hopefully none of them will come by early today, because we plan to sleep in!
Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of Death On The Pedernales, book five in my pal George Wier’s popular Bill Travis mystery series. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening.
Thought For The Day – Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
Check Out Nick’s E-Books In Our Online Store