Indiana/Kentucky

I can't believe our 2 weeks here in Indiana are almost up.  The campground is great - the busy time of the year is over so most of the nights, very few people have been here.  It's nice and quiet and it has a great bike/walking path so we can at least pretend to get a little exercise.  Even though we are staying in Indiana, we are sharing these 2 weeks with parts of Indiana, Kentucky and still some of Ohio.  We are right on the Ohio River and if you look across it, you see Kentucky.  It is very strange to me how much you can "feel" the difference of each state.  The smells, the land and the agriculture seem to change with each crossing of the border.  Where we are in Indiana, being on the river, it is very industrial, but as you ride through the hills it becomes more vast farmland.  Almost as soon as you cross into Kentucky the whole view changes to huge, beautifully kept horse farms.

We have found some really cool spots in all 3 states in these 2 weeks.  Riding along the river in Indiana we found a town called Friendship with about 5 buildings - one of them being a bar, of course. You can't have a place called Friendship without a place for people to meet and hang out with their friends.   We went to another place called Third and Main in a bit of a bigger town, Aurora.  I asked the owner if he had any suggestions of anything to do nearby.  The place wasn't too busy at the time and he and his staff sat with us for a good half hour trying to come up with the best ideas of what to see.  What a great group of people they were and what great ideas they had.  It's funny how when you get a group of people like that together and you ask what is special about their area, very often it starts out as a negative answer..."there's nothing around here.." but once one of them comes up with a good idea, it becomes almost a competition of who can think of the best ideas.

The gang at "Third and Main"

 

A fun sign in Aurora

Another day of riding, this one in Kentucky, brought us to an interesting and historic spot which was a great walk, with a little quality time spent with a herd of bison. As we stopped to take a picture, a motorcycle drove by, made a U-turn, pulled up behind us, the guy got off his bike, took off his helmet and said "can I take a picture for you guys?"  Then took the picture, hopped back on his bike and was on his way again. Who does that?   People are so nice.  (He did take a picture of both of us here - but I kind of liked this one better.)

 

Enough Said

 



 A short drive down the road and we were in famous Rabbit Hash, a really neat little place... a small town with all of the original buildings - apparently it is a famous destination for bikers.  They had a little general store where you could go in and buy a bottle of beer and they would open it for you so you could take it outside and sit by the river. There was a woman who had a shop across the street who didn't believe in drinking, so the only rule was that you couldn't cross any of the lines in the street because that was her property.   Later in the week we met someone who actually lives in Rabbit Hash who told us he lives there because he won his piece of property there in  a poker game.  Quite a gamble!  That same day we had "Kentucky Eggs" which are hard boiled eggs, wrapped in sausage, rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried.  Yum!!

We also headed back into Ohio for a day.  There is a place in Cincinnati called Tier2 defense training.  They specialize in training people in self defense and home defense.  I didn't quite feel ready for the adrenaline rush, but Cliff went into the training, which is an area set up like rooms in a house.  They told him there was a gun and ammo on the table and someone had just broken into the house.  He loaded the gun (with simmunition - fake bullets used for training) and had to wander through the rooms and get the bad guy.  He was amazed at how the adrenaline did effect him, but the trainer (and the guy he shot) said he did awesome and had great hits each time.  I'm glad he's here to protect me!  We then went to a place with 176 beers on tap.  Not just  beers, but 176 good beers.  It was amazing.  It's a place we need to come back to sometime, but get a hotel room nearby.  To those who know it - it was kind of like "Good Guys Pub" (the bar in our basement) - but instead of empty bottles it was surrounded by beer taps.  It will probably rank up there as one of our top 5 bars that we've ever been in.

 

 

And then there were the festivals.  First was the Soup, Stew, Chili and Brew Festival.  The brew was supposed to be coffee, but if you looked hard enough, you could find the beer tasting too.  Then on to the Navy Bean Festival.  What do you do at a Navy Bean Festival?  Eat Navy Bean soup and listen to music.  Apparently there was a little "Bean" in a navy uniform wandering around, but we missed him.  The next day was the bicentennial of "Little Switzerland" right down the road from us.  They had a tent full of costumes and all the residents went in and put on a costume, so as we stood there, it was like we were being transformed back in time watching all the people wandering around.  I love that kind of stuff.  They also had 200 birthday cakes - which didn't hurt either.

So I am realizing that we did so much here it really deserves 2 blogs so I will leave with this story.  I am finding that one of my favorite "unexpected" things on our journey is learning about and understanding the pilgrims a bit more.  Being from upstate NY there isn't too much pilgrim history there, but as we travel we are finding more and more.  There are a series of statues across the country called "Madonna of the Trail"  dedicated to the women who left their homes behind and followed their "men" across country in hopes of a better life.  In 1909 a group of  women got together in hopes of getting a National Road built that crossed the country to make travelling safer. In 1911 the Daughters of the American Revolution proposed the road and were told to place boulders or some other kind of marker in each state showing where the road would go.  They went one better and had this statue built as the marker.  By 1929 - the markers were all set up.  The road never actually came into being as it was proposed, but the markers still stand as a reminder of what the pilgrim's went through to reach the other side of the country.  Whenever we are riding around I always have it in the back of my mind...where did those people find the courage to just start travelling with no specific destination and no idea what they were about to face?   I feel really brave because I left my "safety net" in New York - but I would never have the courage to do it without GPS, mapquest, Skype and knowing I have a warm, comfy place to sleep each night.