Moving north in Indiana

Thursday (Aug 6):

On Thursday morning we packed up the Duchess and moved 150 miles north to the Timberline Valley RV Resort in Anderson IN (between Indianapolis and Muncie). When we left the campground this morning there was a light rain which got heavier as we travelled north on I-65. We stopped and purchased diesel for the motorhome and we pleasantly surprised that the prices have dropped. As we approached the campground the rain began to lighten and by the the time we arrived it had stopped. So we were able to set up without having to wear our rain gear.

This is a small private campground that has a number of full hook-up sites. We were assigned a back-in site and guided to the location by one of the campground workers. It seems like most of the private campgrounds have someone guide you to your site while the public campground do not. The campground is located a site that was once used as a quarry with a small pond that has a swimming area. We are able to pick up local TV stations from Indianapolis but because our site has large trees there is no way for our satellite dish to pick up DirecTV.

Our Site - B3

Deck overlooking the small lake

Friday (Aug 7):

This morning we woke to discover that our refrigerator has "died". We have been dealing with several issues since we left Texas but always have been able to get the unit working again. But today after trying several "fixes" nothing worked. So we have decided to replace the absorption refrigerator with a "residential" unit. All of our refrigerated food in now in our small basement unit and we have no freezer. So for the next couple of weeks we were be purchasing only a couple of days worth of groceries at a time. We are going to return to Crossville TN to have Creston RV Service remove the old unit and put in the new one during the week of August 24th. We have also been having some problems with our Oasis Hydronic Heating System that we will have Bill at Creston RV look at as well.

We then spent the rest of the morning going through all of our basement storage to organize and get rid of several items that we have not used since we left. We also were able to consolidate some items and dispose of some cleaning supplies. We also removed and cleaned our of the rear lights on the Duchess since the lens were so dirty the lights were dim.

In the afternoon we went to the Mounds State Park located near the campground to view the Great Mounds and do some hiking. The park features 10 unique earthworks built by prehistoric Indians known as the Adena-Hopewell people. The largest earthwork, the Great Mound, is believed to have been constructed around 160 B.C. Archaeological surveys indicate the mounds were used as gathering places for religious ceremonies from where astronomical alignments could be viewed.

We did not take any pictures of the mounds since they are now covered with
vegetation and would not show up in our photos.

The park was part of a family farm, the Bronnenbergs, that was first settled in 1819. The family farmed the land for several generations and managed to  preserve the area around the mounds. The mounds themselves are one of the few remaining sites in the United States.

House built by the Bronnenbergs in the 1840's

During the 1920's the Bronnenberg family that owned the farm created an amusement park around the mounds. They built a trolley from the local town so that people from all over Indiana could ride the train and from the train station take the trolley out to the mounds. The amusement park closed during the Depression of the 1930's and today there is no trace of either the amusement park or the trolley tracks.

The park has a number of hiking trails some of which are paved and some are not. Connie and I walked around to park to visit the mounds but then Connie's back began to bother her so she went back to the Jeep while I walked for about 3 more miles. We took a quick tour of the campground located at the park (water & electric only) before returning to the Duchess for the evening.

The weather here has been been great the last of couple of days: morning lows in the 50's and afternoon highs in the 70's. We noticed that high temperatures in Texas have been in the 100's for a while now so it is great to be where it is cooler.