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.

Louisville KY

Monday (Aug 3):

Monday morning we moved the Duchess from North Fork Campground in Kentucky to the Charlestown State Park north of Louisville in Indiana. The campground is located close to the Ohio River but is not on the river itself. The campground has about 200 campsites and only about 20 were occupied while we were there. Since we did not have full hook-ups at the North Fork Campground and do at the Charlestown State Park, we proceeded to do all of our laundry which took several hours.

Charlestown was the location of the world largest smokeless powder plant which was constructed during WWII and operated until the early 1990's. At the height of production there were 1,700 buildings located on almost 20,000 acres of land.

Today all of this is a ghost town with trees and vegetation now growing up around all of the buildings. Here is a link to the history of this plant, Indiana Army Ammunition Plant ,which I found very interesting. Charlestown State Park was created from 4,500 acres that were transferred to the State of Indiana in 1992.

Tuesday (Aug 4):

We left the campground and went by an RV dealership in Clarksville IN that that has a parts department to purchase several items for the Duchess. From there we proceeded to the Cave Hill Cemetery which is the oldest cemetery in Louisville. The cemetery contains 300 acres with a lake in the middle. One side of the lake is "old money" and the other side is "new money". The monuments and grave markers in the old money section were beautiful and interesting to look at.

From there we proceeded to Churchill Downs to visit the Kentucky Derby Museum. Connie had attended the Kentucky Derby a couple of times in the early 1980's so this was a return visit for her. We had a quick tour of the track and visited some of the areas underneath the stands. From there we viewed a movie of the history of the Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby and then took a tour of the museum. The Kentucky Derby has been run every year since 1875 which is a year before Custer's Last Stand (to put it in perspective).

Old and New Stands at Churchill Downs

These spires are now in the National Historic Registry.

It's Connie by a nose

Mike leaving the starting gate. It is $25,000 for a horse to enter the starting
gate at the Kentucky Derby and $25,000 for them to open the gate and let the horse to run the race.

"Larger than Life" statue of Pat Day stands 5 ft tall. Pat Day has won the
Kentucky Derby more than any other jockey and is 4 ft 11 inches all in real life.

Hats worn at the Derby

More hats from the Derby

Some more hats worn at the Derby. It is tradition for women and men to
dress up for the Derby.

A couple of interesting stories from our visit:

In the early years of the Derby jockeys would carry lead to make the required minimum weight of 126 pounds for sires and 121 pounds for mares in the Derby. As they reached the back side of the track they would throw the lead in the infield to lighten their load and make the horse faster. So they started weighing the jockey after to the race to make sure that their starting weight is also their finishing weight. This is were we get the expression - "Getting the lead out".

In 2015 Wes Welker, a wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, won several hundred thousand dollars on bets during Derby Day (all of the betting at Churchill Downs is in cash and in 2015 over $120 million dollars was wagered). As he was leaving the stands he autographed $100 bills and handed them out as souvenirs.

During our visit to the Kentucky Derby Museum we ate at the Cafe. We enjoyed some of the Derby traditions.

Connie has finished her Mint Julep (Mike helped)

Mike and Connie shared a Derby Pie.

Wednesday (Aug 9):

We decided to visit downtown Louisville today. Our first stop was at the Muhammad Ali Center. The Center celebrates the life of Ali who was born in Louisville and has been very generous with the city and community. The Center deals with Ali's life as a boxer, a humanitarian and as an international personage. It was enlightening to see all of the charitable contribution that Ali has made from the beginning of his boxing career through today. He donated money from his first professional fight to a local charity in Louisville and he has continued this pattern throughout his life.

Connie is my "Greatest"

Replica of where Ali trained in Pennsylvania

After leaving the Ali Center we walked a few blocks to the Louisville Slugger Museum. We walked through the public area of the museum but decided not to take the factory tour. The company, Hillerich & Bradbury Co, has been making baseball bats since the 1890's in Louisville. In downtown Louisville there are plaques including replicas of bats of the Baseball Hall of Fame members who used the Louisville Slugger bats in their careers.

Mike in front of the Louisville Slugger Museum

A rather large baseball bat

Honus Wagner plague and bat

Babe Ruth plague and bat

There also was an exhibit of Topps Trading Cards which have been around since 1948. They make cards of all major league baseball players but they also make trading cards of TV shows and movies. Some of the TV shows include Batman, Happy Days and Star Trek. The movies included Frozen, Indiana Jones series and Star Trek.

Sure to be a collector's item

After finishing at the Slugger Museum we stopped at the Bristol Bar and Grille to eat lunch. We tried two of their specialties: I had the "Hot Brown" and Connie had the "Theresa's Sweet Chili Linguine". I liked mine more than Connie like hers.

From downtown we traveled out to Vicki and Gary Edelen's house which is located in Floyd's Knob, a suburb of Louisville located in Indiana. We had a nice visit with them and their daughter Maggie before all of us headed out to Huber's Orchard and Winery. The farm has been in the Huber family since 1843 when Simon Huber emigrated from Germany to Indiana. They have been making wines for generations and have now started a distillery that makes gin, vodka and bourbon. We did a wine tasting and neither of us were too thrilled with the wines which tended to be on the sweet side. It is amazing that the same family has been farming the same land since 1843.

An old grape/wine press

Connie & Gary doing their wine tasting

We said our good-byes to Vicki, Gary and Maggie and returned to the Duchess. We have enjoyed our visit to Louisville and the sights we were able to see while we were here.

Rough River Lake Kentucky

Monday (Jul 27):

Monday morning we ate breakfast at the local McDonald's and said our good-byes to Fran and Mal. They are headed to Ohio while we are going to Kentucky. We got the Duchess ready for departure and made the 100 mile drive to the North Fork Campground on the Rough River near McDaniels Kentucky. This campground is a COE park located on the Rough River Lake. We had made reservations for our site which is the largest one in the campground. We got set up and made a trip to Leitchfield KY to visit the Walmart and get resupplied.

Site 38 @ North Fork Campground

After returning from Leitchfield we went to visit Terry and Coston Lawson who live in a house here at Rough River Lake. Terry and Coston are finishing out the house they started building several years ago. The last time Connie had seen them was 32 years ago so a lot of the conversation was getting caught up on everyone's lives.

Tuesday (Jul 28):

On Tuesday we decided to visit the Mammoth Cave National Park which is located about an hour from our campground. On the way over to Mammoth Cave we stopped in Leitchfield at the local bike shop, Embrey's Bike Shop, and had the inner tube replaced on the rear wheel of Connie's bike. From there we continued on to the park where we purchased our tickets for the Historic Tour of the cave and then sat down to eat the picnic lunch Connie had put together for us.

After we had finished lunch we returned to the Visitor Center and took a short tour of the informational area of the center. At 1:40 PM we met with our tour group outside of the visitor center, got our marching instructions and then proceeded to the entrance to the cave.

Ranger Booby giving us our final instructions before entering the cave.
He has been guiding tour groups here since 1977 and this is his last year  before retiring.

Mammoth Cave is the largest cave system in the world with over 400 miles of cave that have been surveyed. The cave system goes to a depth of over 300 feet below the surface and there is an underground river that still runs through the bottom of the cave. We decided to take the Historic Tour since we were only going to be there for the day and it gives you the best experience of the cave. There have been tours of the cave since 1816. These original tours were guided by slaves of the owners of the property and Steven Bishop (who was a self educated enslaved person) was the first to explore some of the depths of the cave. They were limited by the technology of the day for lighting their way down into the cave. Mammoth Cave became a National Park in 1921 and the CCC finished a number of improvements to the park during the 1930's.

Entrance to Mammoth Cave

Area where they mined saltpeter in the early 19th Century

Largest "room" inside the cave, The Rotunda

The cave tour was very interesting and Ranger Bobby did a great job of explaining interesting facts about the cave and answering questions from members of the tour group. The tour has a lot of steps along the 2 miles route and part of the tour route is called Fat Man's Misery for a reason. The temperature in the cave is 54 degrees so it was nice to be out of the heat for a while. The tour lasted about 2 hours after which we came back to the Visitor Center and finished up our visit to the informational center. We are glad we were able to tour the cave since next year a large section of the cave that we went through will be closed for improvements to the trail.

Coming back from Mammoth Cave we took a different route and went across the Green River on a small ferry. The river is not very wide and there was not much traffic using the ferry when we crossed.

That night we spent time visiting with another couple that Connie had not seen in a long time, Vicki and Gary Edelen. Vicki and Terry are sisters who Connie knew from her life in Dallas through her second husband, Butch Boone (Butch's cousins).

Wednesday (Jul 29):

On Wednesday we spent several hours on Gary and Vicki's pontoon boat touring Rough River Lake. The lake is a COE built flood control lake that was finished in 1961. This summer the lake is full with all of the rain that Kentucky has received. There are three different COE campgrounds located on the lake along with a state park. A number of private houses have been built around the lake, some small and some very large. We stopped in the boat in several locations around the lake and went swimming.

Thursday (Jul 30):

Thursday we spent the day in our campground. We walked around the campground (which has been almost empty during the week). We also spent time on Terry's pontoon boat. We traveled down the lake to the dam and also spend some time swimming in the lake. That evening we went over to Gary and Vicki's lake house to eat dinner with them and Terry and Coston.

Gary, Terry, Vicki, Coston and Connie

Serious discussions after dinner

Friday (Jul 31):

On Friday morning we joined Gary and Vicki on their ski boat to watch Gary ski. Gary is part of a group here on the Rough River Lake that maintains two ski courses on different parts of the lake. Gary has been skiing since he was a teenager and is an excellent water skier. It was amazing to see Gary on skis going through the course.

The rope is shortened each time the course in completed and the goal is to see how short you can make the rope and still finish the course. Gary skis the course at 32 MPH and was able to shortened the rope a couple of times this morning and still finish the course. Gary told us about one lady who lives on the lake and skied until she was 90 so Gary hopes he has another 30 years of skiing.

After eating a quick lunch we joined Gary, Vicki, Coston and Terry on the lake to kayak. We inflated and launched our two man kayak, Gary and Vicki started out in one-man kayaks while Terry and Coston were on paddle boards. We went up the lake on one of the smaller and less busy areas and paddled for about 3 hours on the trip up and back. The weather was great and we switched around so that Gary, Vicki and I could try the paddle boards.

Starting up the lake

Vicki and Gary in kayaks

Gary on the paddle board

I got on the paddle board and managed to not fall in the water

There were sections of the lake where the surface was like glass. This part of the lake gets narrower and narrower as we paddled along.

That evening all of us went over to Terry and Coston's house where they cooked us Conk Fritters, fried oysters, blacken Snook and fried Snook. Terry and Coston had spent several weeks in Florida earlier in the year and had purchased and frozen the Snook fish. It was delicious and we all ate too much. Then Terry served us a fresh blackberry cobbler along with ice cream for dessert. Better than eating at a 5 star restaurant.

Connie and Mike standing under the "Blue Moon of Kentucky" at Terry & Coston's
Notice Connie's new glasses!

Saturday (Aug 1):

Saturday we took it easy most of the day around the Duchess. We did "fix" the overhead light in our bedroom that would not stay on very long since the ballast in the light fixture is going out. So we swapped it out with one that is in the front of the motor home that we rarely use. In the evening Connie went over to Vicki's house to join in a party that was being held for Vicki's cousin's daughter who is getting married soon.

Sunday (Aug 2):

We ended up putting the kayak back in the water this morning and rowing over to Vicki's house to visit with Vicki, Vicki's daughter Maggie and Terry. From there we kayaked around the lake for about an hour before returning back to the campground.

Once we finished putting up the kayak to dry we decided to visit one of the local restaurants, Rubbie's River Shack, for lunch. Connie had a fish sandwich and I had a pulled pork sandwich both of which were very good.

We returned home to take it easy before spending the evening getting the Duchess ready to travel north to southern Indiana on Monday morning.