Saturday, June 30, 2007

My Brain is the Size of a Pea



Yesterday afternoon Vicki (my BFF from eighth grade) called to invite us out for Happy Hour or dinner or whatever we wanted to do. Since both Don and Vicki's campground and our campground are so far out in the sticks, we just decided to meet at Don and Vicki's place. Denny and I had yet to see their toy hauler or the Thousand Trails campground where they were staying, so that was the best option. Naturally, I can't just climb into the truck and leave, I have to make a chip dip, after which I decided that, knowing all of us and our penchant to talk, I'd better take brats, hot dogs and buns because we'd be drinking/talking so much that we'd forget to go out and look for a place to eat. Sure enough, there we were at 10PM just starting to eat our brats by the light of a gorgeous full moon on the most pleasant evening of the summer. Don's margaritas were fantastic, the company great and the new fifth wheel was very attractive and comfortable.

Why is my brain the size of a pea? I forgot my camera, so I have no photographic record of the newest full timers on the block at their rig, or their hogs, or of the fifth wheel itself. Or of the full moon that floated in and out of the clouds all evening. Darn, darn and sigh.


Denny and I are so excited for Don and Vicki because they have this marvelous adventure ahead of them as they start their travels. We remember that sense of freedom mixed with trepidation as you hit the road with no real knowledge of what might be around the next corner but being ready to enjoy whatever it is you find. The knowledge that you have all the time in the world to explore any given area is incredibly refreshing and relaxing. The fact that you'll be surrounded by other folks living the same way and who are always more than willing to impart their knowledge learned by trial and error is comforting, for embarking on a full time rving lifestyle is a scary thing.

Don and Vicki will be moving on to new places on Monday. I know we'll see them again, but for now I envy them the anticipation and excitement of their journey.

Happy Trails, my friends, 'til we meet again.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Tidbits and New Bits

Woot! Yesterday while shopping the new Lowe's store in Xenia I found moss roses! Yay! Now my little cedar tree flower bed is done.

Strangely enough, Denny and I got a kick out of shopping at Lowes
yesterday because we stumped two different associates with our
requests; linseed oil and hardware cloth. Dumbfounded looks were the
first response, followed by the associate approaching a senior member
of the staff for assistance. No linseed oil, but they did havetung oil
varnish and teak oil (the senior associate knew what he was doing). I
went for the teak oil because two wonderful little folding chairs I
bought from the estate sale my mother handled may be teak, or if not,
they are a sturdy hardwood that would soak up the oil. Denny's request
for hardware cloth meant that we were eventually sent to the lawn and
garden department where the associate was clueless, but we discovered
the cloth near the chicken wire. We were surprised to find that the
cloth is now manufactured in plastic as well as wire, but we were
looking for pieces of the hardware cloth and not entire rolls. We may
have to find a Tractor Supply store to be able to buy just a piece.

The
teak oil worked wonderfully on the chairs, although they need another
soaking in a day or so. It's raining right now so pictures will have to
wait. These little chairs are going to be perfect for traveling since
they fold up fairly flat and are lightweight but incredibly sturdy,
having been made back in the 40s probably.

As I mentioned, it's raining, so we'll not be doing the gardening in Cinci today as planned. Tonight we're meeting up with Denny's sister and aunt to see "Grease" at the La Comedia dinner theater in Springboro. We always have a great time there and the shows are always well done.

The new bit? Over in the right hand column below the Flavicon
button is a new button called Crystal Cachet. It leads you to my
website that shows what I've been doing on our off-days. It's a work in
progress...

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Settling In



The estate sale is over, we haven't had enough rain to cause the grass to grow much, so Denny and I have had a couple of days off to relax.

Yesterday I hauled some wood chips from the pile left by the tree cutters here at the campground to place on my tiny flower bed. Right now there are geraniums, petunias and some pachysandra I culled from underneath my mother's spreading juniper bushes. They are rather leggy right now, but I hope they fill out and spread over the next month or so. I'm still looking for moss roses (portulaca) but the prospect of finding some this late in the season seems a bit grim.

Vicki and Don arranged for some old friends to meet at the original Marion's Piazza in Belmont this past Sunday. We're talking people I hadn't seen in 25 years but used to spend a great deal of time with when I was married to my first husband. Funny how people change yet stay the same. Good times. Don and Vicki are into their third week of full time rving now, but I'll have more on that later. Right now they are busy catching up with old friends in the area before heading out for parts unknown.

Tomorrow and Thursday we'll be back at our lawn and gardening chores, although rain is kinda-sorta in the forecast. Basically, the humidity is so high that the sky spits a little to get rid of some of it and that's it. It ain't rain, that's for sure. We're still seven inches below normal rainfalls for the area and that hurts.

I think I'll go torture myself by doing some water aerobics in the ice cold swimming pool here. I truly appreciate the heated pools of the western states now. Having blue lips just isn't a good look for me.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Lazy Sunday Scenes From Last Week

Much of our week was spent assisting at the estate sale my mother was running (well, I assisted while Denny did odd jobs and played golf) so there wasn't a lot of picture taking going on this past week. But we did have a few quiet moments to enjoy the campground and our surroundings. Bird song surrounds us daily and occasionally we see the flashes of red, blue and orange belonging to the cardinals, blue jays and orioles that swoop among the trees, while the huge shadows of silent vultures floating above provide moving targets for Patches to chase.


A little maintenance got the Mantis tiller running, making it much easier to hoe between the plants in the garden. My father-in-law is still proud of the fact that his picture is on the Mantis website.


Who knew that potatoes could be pretty? It looks like there is going to be a good crop this year.


I not only hauled river rock from the creek bed for my little mini-flower bed around the cedar tree, but Denny dug the dirt from there, too, using a five gallon bucket to carry the dirt. Imagine my surprise when after dumping and spreading the dirt around this little toad appeared. Why he wasn't crushed by the weight of the dirt in that bucket, I don't know.


The dry creek bed that Patches and I wander every evening. It looks like a shady road in the forest, doesn't it? Ohio is suffering a drought this year and the rainfall has been about eight inches below normal so far. This creek would be a delightful babbling brook if it was full of water, because there are dips and large rocks to plash (look it up) about.


Nooks and crannies and fallen trees abound along the banks of the creek. From all the sniffing that Patches does around the exposed roots of the trees at the upper banks of the creek I can only assume that critters might rest there in the day, leaving their scent for a curious cat.


Patches' TV. I scatter sunflower seeds for the birds so that Patches has entertainment while we're gone, but it didn't take long for the squirrel to discover the bounty.


When I come home from a long day of being on my feet, I look forward to sitting with my feet up, rocking and swaying in my rocker-glider. This is what I find instead.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Two Long Days

Yesterday and today I helped out at the estate sale my mother and her partner were handling. It's work. Followed by boredom. Followed by work.

Most people that come to these sales are nice. Your first group through will be your antique dealers, flea market set-up folks, ebay buyers. Then your wanna-be dealers, collectors, bored old folks. Then the second day are the flea-ers again (they know the second day is discount or half-price day) or the young folks furnishing a house or apartment, or old folks needing a bargain to replace items or the bored housewives. And there are always the thieves, who leave behind a trail of empty boxes/envelopes/sleeves/packages, etc. It's fascinating to stand on the sidelines as it were, listening to the stories from the neighbors of the family whose belongings you are selling, or the hard-luck stories of those trying to get a bigger discount or trying to weasel their way in before the sale even starts (I'm going out of town, to a wedding/can't come back/having an operation,blah,blah,blah). Today there was a 10-year old boy going from room to room dragging his mother to see this and that wonderful thing--he was our best salesman and just as cute as a button. His family bought a lot of "stuff" and the young man was thrilled with what they found. A future antique dealer in training, I think.

I made out okay, too. My pay for assisting was a beautiful set of 12 etched crystal wine glasses (from the 40s). I love crystal and crystal wine glasses are my one indulgence in the rv. So I'll switch out the ones I currently use (a delicate iridescent antique crystal) for these. And have a whole bunch of back up stems since I only carry 4 stems at a time. I'm a happy camper.

And it rained today. For a whole hour. But we'll take it.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Dear Deer

Dear Deer,

You have a couple of acres of woods back there behind my FIL's house, so why do you wander into the garden to eat the tomatoes? FIL has strung bars of soap around the garden to keep you out and it seems to have worked all these years so why, now that Denny is SO looking forward to good Ohio tomatoes, are you now eating his plants???? Believe me, the delicacy is NOT the plant but the fruit. Please go eat the poison ivy instead.

Thank you.
The Farmer Vagabonds

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

A Preview of What's to Come

For the past week I've been helping my mother and her business partner set up an estate sale. That's what my mother does for her mad money--she contracts to sell the contents of a house when the owners have passed away or are downsizing by moving to a smaller home or to a nursing home. It usually involves a great deal of cleaning up other peoples' messes to set out and arrange the belongings left after family and friends have taken what they want from a household. Sometimes the homes are really nasty and sometimes they are fairly clean, like this one (okay, except for the pile of #2 someone left on a paper towel in the bathtub). To me, it seems like too many hours of work for the percentage of the profits they get from the sale, but my mom is every hopeful of finding that great antique buried under a pile of stuff in a closet that will bring in tons of money. That doesn't happen very often.

This house has a basement, breezeway, living room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms,garage and an attic, so there were four of us moving around the rooms assisting folks while one manned the check out desk. It's tiring work and I admire my mom and Dottie for doing it, because I wouldn't last too long, since I would get upset if the family snatched things out of the house once it had been priced, thereby taking money out of their pockets for the percentage of money that item would sell for. Yes, there are contracts, but they can't really be enforced, so many times Mom and Dottie will have spent hours cleaning items, looking up prices in value guides and online, setting it out to its best advantage, tagging it, etc. only to find it gone the next day after the family has been through the house. There are a lot of horror stories there.

But today was "preview" day, when the local antique dealers get a sneak peak and chance to buy stuff ahead of everyone with the understanding that they pay the sticker price--no discounts. The dealers love that, because they know what it there is priced so they can still make a profit and they descend like locusts as soon as the doors are opened. You have to stand back or get knocked down!

My mother and Dottie always get a lot of compliments because of the way items are washed and set out to display them in their best light. I hope this sale will be a good one. Thursday we go back for the "real" opening day, from 9AM to 5PM. Not looking forward to that, but they can use all the hands they can get. Denny will be playing golf--too much craziness for him!


Lots of washing of dishes and glasses to make them shine.


Mom and Dottie bring in their own folding tables and covers to display the items to their best advantage.


The toys went quickly today--lots of boys' stuff from the 50s, which means it was stuff that was very familiar to me! I had my own set of Hopalong Cassidy cap guns in a holster, similar to the ones on the table.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Lazy Sunday Honors Father's Day

We lost my father to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1996. Also known as Lous Gehrig's disease, the ALS took him in seven months, well below the national average of five to seven years.

My father worked hard all his life to support us, leaving little time to share with his kids, but he did better with his grandkids. But I think he would have hated the idea of being a great-grandpa because he was a little vain and that would have sounded too old for his taste.

So Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there and all those *up* there.


Darby was the first grandchild. Good thing Grandpa didn't realize that the Darb had been slobbering prior to his baptism.


Babysitting can just wear a man out.


Christmas was and is a big deal at our house and Dad was just as big a kid as the rest of us when opening presents.


Dad with my niece, Elaine on our deck. Obviously these pictures are from the late 70s and 80s, since that little girl is now pregnant with her own little girl.

Friday, June 15, 2007

RV Working Too Hard?

The Lady of the Lake asked me for pictures of my FIL's garden, since that was the purpose of the hiatus in our travels. It just so happens that I have a couple available so here you have the efforts of the Farmer Vagabonds.


Denny used some old pcv pipe found in his dad's garage to tie into the garden hose. He added an upright section of pipe and a sprinkler head that shoots out in a half-round pattern for up to 25 feet which works for the extremely downsized garden. When I first met my father-in-law he grew dill, asparagus, rhubarb, cucumbers, potatoes, sweet corn, strawberries, green peppers, chili peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, horseradish, broccoli, cauliflower, lima beans, onions, beets and green beans in a garden that was at least a quarter-acre in size. The man was 70 years old at that time. But Dad no longer has the energy to handle a big garden and Denny's step-mother has no interest in canning anymore, so the garden now consists of lettuce, green peppers, pimentos, tomatoes and potatoes.


The water sprinkler in action. We purchased an automatic timer which waters the garden every other morning at 6AM for a half-hour. Isn't technology wonderful?


Denny's sister Connie actually planted the garden with Dad before we arrived, but the lettuce seeds they started weren't ready to transplant until we got into town. So we did get to grub in the dirt a little.



The same plants six days later. Notice the high tech rabbit repellant--an old piece of net held up by pieces of old iron pipe and held in place by clods of garden dirt. High tech stuff here.



One of the green pepper plants had a tiny nub of a green pepper on it the first day we stopped down at the house, but I forgot to take a picture of it. This was taken a week later and the pepper gained quite a bit of size.


Six days later and the pepper had doubled in size again.


There's a lot of yard to cut in Cinci, so the yard around the house is cut with a cute little John Deere lawn tractor with a mulching blade. But the "back 40" gets cut with the old, OLD manual shift Farmer John (my name for it) tractor. As you can see, we were having fun with it.


The city girl learns how to drive a tractor--yee haw!


FIL stays inside in the air conditioning while Denny's sister Connie fixes us all lunch. Our treat that day was a scrumptious spinach salad with a rhubarb dressing and a main course of fresh mett sausage. We are back in Cincinnati!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Something Different

A friend had free tickets for a showing of the new movie "A Mighty Heart" at the new upscale shopping mall just outside of my hometown of Kettering, Ohio. Since Denny and I have been helping my mother set up an estate sale just outside the Kettering city limits during the day, we accepted Lin's offer to join her. At the time I accepted Lin's invitation I had no idea of what movie we were going to see, I just knew that Denny and I needed some mindless entertainment from the work we've been doing.

Mindless entertainment this movie is not. Angela Jolie does a credible job portraying Mary Anne Pearl, the wife of journalist Daniel Pearl who was abducted and later beheaded in Pakistan. The movie is Mary Anne's perspective of the abduction and of the attempts of those around her to find Daniel. This is one of those movies that will have you discussing the morals and thought processes of the characters afterwards.

What I couldn't figure out is why there were men at the door asking us to turn off our cell phones (reasonable and agreeable) and then looking in all the women's purses for recording devices and cameras. It seems we were at special preview showing a week in advance of the actual movie release date, so I assume they didn't want any of the footage showing up on YouTube. There were men who wandered the theater during the entire film watching for cameras or cell phones being used, intent on removing anyone using such a device. Interesting.

Upon exiting the theater we were treated to a sunset that was quite spectacular for this area. And then we had a 20- mile drive home to a very unhappy cat.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Ya Try to Do Something Nice...



Yesterday Denny and I took a break from assisting our respective parents and headed up to Delaware to spend the afternoon with Darb and Net. Darb and I made a deal--he would make and grill shish kabobs for us if Denny would bake him a cherry-rhubarb pie. Since none of this involved any work at all on my part, I quickly agreed and it was all arranged.

The weather was absolutely ideal for grilling out and sitting on the patio that Darb hand-laid with paving bricks. Net served some terrific munchies and we quaffed a variety of non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages throughout the afternoon. In between the munchies and dinner Darb brought out my belated Mother's Day gift. In May we had been traveling across the U.S. in one night hops so I e-mailed Darb not to attempt to send his normal Mother's Day bouquet because I wasn't sure where we'd be. I oh-so-casually mentioned a CD that I would like to have (because I'm nothing if not subtle) and left it at that. Sure enough, in a three-stack of gifts there was my original Broadway cast recording of Chorus Line (yippee!) along with two more CDs of scanned photographs from the family albums that I gave to Darb for safekeeping when Denny and I hit the road. One was entitled 1985 (very original) and the other was The White Book (I might have gone for the White Album, but that was way before Darb's time) which was a weird little drawer-like photo album I had. Denny and I were tickled to death by the surprise, because we know it's a lot of work to scan those old photographs and Darb just started a new job.

So to thank my oh-so-thoughtful son, I hearby post this picture of him in all his 6 year old glory in his Disney World Sombrero. In case you don't recognize Denny with dark and much longer hair, that's him to the left of Darb, and to the left of Denny is Steve, our oldest son. Aren't they cute?
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Sunday, June 10, 2007

Lazy Sunday in Ohio, Thinking of Oregon

We're having a couple of days of ideal Ohio summer weather. The air is clean and clear, there is a light breeze blowing and the temperatures are only hitting the low 80s. We're going to spend the afternoon in Delaware (Ohio) with our youngest son, Darb, and his wife, Net, and all their animals. Darb is providing the shish kabobs and Denny is providing the cherry-rhubarb pie. Sounds like summer to me.

The weather this morning is reminding me of our summer days in Oregon two years ago, so that will be the theme for today. Sunny days in Oregon. Denny and I are both looking forward to visiting that lovely state again.


I named this picture Brown Mountain Lake but that's not correct. We were driving the Cascade Lakes Highway the day this picture was taken and it is definitely a scenic route.


I'm not sure if this is Little Lava Lake or Lava Lake. I guess I should have been more careful when renamed my pictures but we were in sensory overload this day from all there was to see.



A nighthawk sleeping on a bench at The Narrows Campground in the area of Burns, Oregon. When I say "in the area", I mean that Burns was the closest town to us and it was 25 miles away. Talk about out in the boonies, but it was beautiful there.


Sunset at The Narrows campground. In the lower left is a yurt that is available for overnight rental.


Hmm, I spoke of sunny days but I couldn't resist the shot of this chipmunk and where the sun-don't-shine.


Vidae Falls is located in Crater Lake National Park near the roadway along Rim Road. Picnicking at Crater Lake and circling the lake itself taking pictures was one of the best sightseeing day trips we've taken.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Urban Legends by E-Mail

Well meaning friends and family members have been sending me all sorts of horror stories and/or ways to make money in minutes in their e-mails lately. You know the ones; my cancer could have been prevented if I had a CA-125 blood test, Bill Gates will pay you good money if you forward ten of your friends' e-mail addresses to Microsoft, etc. Whenever I get one of these e-mails the first thing I do is check it through Snopes for validity. Some items, like children being poisoned by antibacterial hand wash, turn out to be true, but the majority are simply urban legends that have been cycling through the Internet time and time again. If you get one of these and think you should pass it on to friends take two minutes to check it out on Snopes.com before you hit the forward button.

My inbox thanks you.

Strawberry Shortcake the RV Vagabond Way

One of the good things about the Mid-West is the homegrown produce. Denny and I arrived back in Ohio just in time for strawberry season, so it was time to make us some strawberry shortcake. But there's no picking the ingredients up at the grocery store for us--oh no!


First you drive out into the country early in the morning to beat the heat and humidity, only to find there are other strawberry lovers there before you.


You carefully pick the ripest, reddest berries, but not necessarily the biggest ones, because you don't have to slice up the little ones!


This is enough for about three days for us! Strawberries on cereal, strawberries in a bowl, strawberry shortcake.


Of course, you have to wash, hull and slice the berries before tossing them in a big bowl and sprinkling them with a bit of sugar--not much, because Ohio berries are naturally sweet.


I had already baked the shortcakes the other day, so I didn't have a picture of a pan of freshly baked shortcakes to insert in here, nor did I take a picture of myself whipping up a batch of heavy cream for the topping--not enough hands! However, you can see that the finished product is worth the work, or at least we think so!

Friday, June 08, 2007

A Quick Catch Up

Darb IM'd last night, asking about my knee. I figured I should mention the results of my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon since I had whined about hurting the knee about six weeks ago.

When Dr. M walked into the examining room he was a bit concerned that I was there because of the knee he had operated upon. I cleared up that misconception and he proceeded to manipulate my right knee and poke and prod it a bit. The diagnosis was a possible bone chipped off the knee cap, no big deal. Dr. M said he could hear "grating" in the knee (shudder) but sloughed it off. The spot on the x-ray was deemed no problem either so the implication was "deal with it". Okay!

Also this week we received our new satellite dish from a company I discovered online that's located in Florida. The new dish is even better than our old one, since the new one is metal instead of fiberglass/resin product that can shatter upon impact. The bad news was that it arrived in multiple pieces and with a bag of a bazillion bolts, washers and nuts and no instruction sheet, but Denny managed to figure it all out and get it together. The dear man even put the dish up in a heavy rain since he had taken the old dish down while the sun was still shining and the whole put-it-together operation had taken longer than he thought it would. Can't have Linda suffering from Internet withdrawal symptoms now, can we?

We're off to pick strawberries before the heat and humidity set in too badly. At 6AM it was 78 degrees already with severe thunderstorm warnings for the day. I guess that means I have to do housework today. Sigh.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Stone Cold Fossil Filchers

Our ground around our campsite is a little worn. The current owners here have been working hard but apparently the campground was in pretty bad shape when they bought it and it takes a while to get everything back in shape. I thought I would take river rock from the dry creek bed across the driveway from our trailer and make a small flower bed around the little cedar tree that marks the boundry of our lot. For the last couple of days as Patches and I took a walk (she likes the creek bed because it is below ground level and away from people) I would put the rocks I found that were the right shape and size in a pile near the area where we would clamber up near a root hold. I had found several nice rocks with some interesting fossils in them and I was planning on taking a large bucket down to load them all when we finished our walk.

That plan was interrupted by the neighbor's dog which was unleashed and unwilling to let a cat pass by unmolested. She came after Patches like a bat out of h*ll and I learned why the retractible leash people warn you about keeping your fingers away from the string of the leash. Let me tell you, when you try to grab a cat who is running full tilt away from you by the leash string to stop her you burn a huge blister on your fingers! Patches did get in a couple of good swipes at the dog's face before the owners grabbed the dog, but I got some good scratches and the burn out of it. Needless to say, after that the rocks were the last thing on my mind.

Today Denny and I hit the local golf course for eighteen holes and when we returned to our campsite I saw two young girls carrying some nice flat rocks to their campsite. I thought "uh oh" there goes my rocks and sure enough, by the time we had put the golf clubs away the parents were down in the creek with the girls and a bucket gathering my nice little pile of rocks. Sigh.

So tomorrow I'll wander a little farther down the creek bed, this time taking a bucket with me, and gather more rocks. Maybe. First we're driving to Cincinnati so Denny can build a rudimentary water system for his dad's garden. Pictures to follow.

And no, the neighbors have no intention of leashing their dog. It's going to be a long summer.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Ewww, Yard Work!

Knee doctor in the morning, dentist in the afternoon, followed by lawn mowing, bush trimming, sweet pea stringing, weed pulling--whew! It's going to be a long, hot summer.

Back when we owned a stick-built home on a half-acre of lawn and gardens the yard work was just something we did as a matter of fact. Now that we have been away from that sort of thing for nine years it seems like a lot of hassle to cut grass and then turn around and cut it again the next week and the next, etc. I mean, nice lush lawns look wonderful and I admire them but I am no longer interested in maintaining one. I imagine that three or four months of taking care of Denny's dad's yard and my mom's yard this summer will definitely cure us of any desire for a house with a lawn or of settling down anywhere. It's funny how your priorties can change along with your perception of what "home" is.

If the rain blows over tomorrow we'll play some golf. If it rains, I might drive over into Dayton to help my mom with the latest estate sale she and her partner have contracted to do. Hmm, golf or work, golf or work...that's a tough one. Heh.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Lazy Sunday in the Mid-West

Crossing the country from Nevada to Ohio desert rock gives way to sage and salt bush. After a while you start to notice cedar trees in the mix. In areas of tiny creeks and shallow rivers cottonwoods stretch their roots deep, and eventually pine trees reach for the sky in the cooler mountain air.

Once you come down out of the mountains trees begin to leaf out in shades of lime, mint and emerald green and long grasses line the interstate pointing the way home with each passing vehicle. There are tractors in some of the fields and already corn is sprouting in many more. Cows have calved, there are foals lying peacefully in the shade of their mothers' shadows and the sheep have already been sheared--it's definitely late spring in the Mid-West.


There is water in the central states--lots of natural and man-made lakes. This is our campground in Monticello, Indiana. Folks on Sea Doos and power boats and pontoon boats go a lot slower than they do out West--they take the time to enjoy what they are doing instead of going for the frenetic activity.


I believe this courthouse was in Frankfort, Indiana along US 241. I wish we could have stopped to take a better picture without the distraction of traffic signals, but it's hard to parallel park 55+ feet of trailer and truck.


Double click on the picture to see the sign on the barn--this is actually a Harley-Davidson dealership in Indiana.


Doesn't this just scream "salt of the earth"? Many of the farms along our route were a lot more weather beaten and worn. I imagine farmers have to put most of their money back into their crops and farm equipment rather than paint for their buildings.


We arrived too late to see the peonies (or pineys as many in the older generation called them) in their glory. My grandmother had peonies in all colors and they have always been one of my favorite flowers.


The young Canada Geese are still fuzzy. This group woke us up every morning with their honking cries as they flew overhead.


If you have barns, then you are going to have cats and mice right? So here's our cat and mouse. Heh. Happy Sunday.
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