Indiana

10/10/23 Indiana Dunes State Park

karenstark

Tuesday – Today we had to get through Chicago, UGH! so I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to do that. There are all kinds of toll roads in the greater Chicago area, and I always try to avoid those because it isn’t always easy to figure out how to pay them. Plus with Nitro behind us, we have four axles and it can be very expensive. (Four axles is WAAAY more than twice the price of two!). We could go way south past Rockford and then east, but that adds a couple of hours to the drive. So I had the Google set to make a route without tolls and we headed east towards Milwaukee. Then as I was looking closer at the route, I could see that there were several places where we had to take surface streets because all of the freeways have tolls. Crap. So I got on the Illinois Tollways website and it had a route planner through the tolls roads, and it came up with about $30 for our route with our four axle vehicle combo. That’s better than the headache of surface streets… in CHICAGO! So I quick got signed up on their system with Nitro’s license plate and changed our route to stay on the Interstates. I had to use Nitro’s license plate because it is the only one visible. (Florida does not issue license plates for the front of the vehicle.). Whew! Now – let’s hope I did it right! Since we were already headed towards Milwaukee, here is what our route looked like to get to the dot at the bottom of Lake Michigan. (The rest of the yellow going northeast is for tomorrow.)

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Day 160-One night in Indiana

karenstark

Thursday August 26, 2021.
Temp: 🥵 87/69, Humidity: 59/99%, Top Wind: SE 6mph, Precip: cloudy, sunny and hot, Miles Traveled: 61

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I thought maybe we’d leave around 7:00 today. The alarm went off, and neither of us were overjoyed. There wasn’t a big weather reason for going early, it just usually makes sense to get up and going when we’re traveling 60 miles, because generally, the water is calmer in the morning. We finally got our butts in gear and pulled our lines at about 7:45. It looked a bit cloudy and maybe rainy outside, but the radar said that the wet clouds were south of us and moving away.
This was our slip…. easy in and out!

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9/21/20 – Kentucky=horses & bourbon

karenstark

Monday: The plan for traveling through Kentucky on the way home was to hit a few bourbon distilleries that we haven’t been to before in the Frankfort area east of Louisville. One of Kenny’s favorite bourbons is Woodford Reserve. Unfortunately they are not open due to Covid. Another possibility was Four Roses. Nope. How about Buffalo Trace? They make a couple dozen labels of bourbon. Well, they ARE open and doing tours, but only by reservation. And as luck would have it, all tours are “FULL” for the day we’re going to be there. I’ve been watching the website for a week now. I was able to put our names in on a waitlist – for every single tour – so we’ll at least go to the gift shop and hopefully there will be some no-shows on a tour that we can go on. These are the three distilleries… Buffalo Trace is at the top in Frankfort, then Woodford Reserve, and then Four Roses at the bottom.

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Days 172-175 NHRA Drag Racing at its best

karenstark

8/31-9/3 … We spent four days at the drag races at the NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.  For the true drag racing fan, this is THE event of the year – the biggest event of the year except for the finals in Pomona California in November.  So this is not the final event, but it is the biggest.  I didn’t really understand why this one is such a big deal, so I had to scope out some answers.  This is the 18th event out of 24 in the season.  It’s kind of like the end of “regular season”, and now the racers go into the playoffs.  It’s confusing, because everybody still gets to race in the remaining six events, but only the top 10 in each category are guaranteed a spot, and only one of these 10 can win the championship for the year.  Throughout the season, racers accumulate points for a variety of things at each event:  each qualifying run, fastest qualifying time, winning the event, and so on.  Everybody comes to Indianapolis because there are extra points available to be earned – so if you are in the number 11 spot, you have extra opportunities to work yourself up into the top 10.  So think about it this way.  (I could be wrong, but my little brain thinks this is how it works.). At each event, racers have to make runs down the track to “qualify”, and only the top 16 qualifiers get to actually compete to win the event.  So now, after 18 events, the top 10 are guaranteed to be qualified for the rest of the season (I think), and the rest of the racers are competing for the six “wild card” positions at each of the six remaining events.  More than you wanted or needed to know.  And now your brain is twisted in a knot, and I could be totally wrong.  But let’s pretend that’s how it works for now. Read more →

Days 168,169,170: Hot and humid days in Indiana

karenstark

8/27/18:  I am reminded of when I was a little girl.  My dad’s parents lived in Indiana, around Monticello.  We usually went to visit them in the spring or fall, I think.  They lived on a lake, or somewhere with a dock on the water anyway- maybe it was the Tippecanoe River.  My brothers and I begged dad to take us to visit in the summer.  He always said it was too hot in the summer, but he finally agreed and we went to Indiana in the summer…. once.  Oh man, it was miserable.  I had prickly heat, and my grandparents did not have air conditioning.  Mind you, this was in the 1960s.  It was hot and wet.  Being from Washington State, we kids had no idea what hot humidity was like.  Dad reminded us that this was one of reasons we lived in Western Washington, and not in Indiana.  Yep – it is hot & humid here in Indiana in the summertime!  Wait a minute.  Isn’t this why we are not in Florida in the summer?  It feels just like summer in Florida! Read more →

3 “I” states in a row- and lots of corn!

karenstark

We said good-bye to Kentucky, crossed the Ohio river in Louisville, and,  ta-da!  We were in Indiana.  This would be the first of three “I” states in a row.

Just about an hour north was Seymour.  We were blessed to spend the day and overnight at our friends Patty and Steve’s house.  We’ve only seen them a couple of times in the last 16 years.  Steve and Kenny used to play together in a praise band at our church many years ago.

We had such a great visit!  We had some great meals, laughs, and fun.  And we had all kinds of opportunities to Read more →