Four-Bit Room Goes Camping: Days 34 - 37: Indianapolis - Animals, Gardens, Storm Bomb & Barbie

Saturday, October 23rd: Travel day to Indianapolis, IN

Before leaving the KOA Middlebury, Ole Dave, the camp caretaker, told us we absolutely had to go by the Rise N' Roll Bakery for breakfast. The only way we could fit in breakfast "out" on a travel day was to get our act together the night before and get up early. We pulled out of the campground at 8:30! This wasn't quite early enough, as the Rise N' Roll Amish bakery was loaded with tour buses. Sigh. Don patiently waited in line to order breakfast while I wove my way around customers in the store picking up eggs, bread, and homemade noodles. Don was entertained while waiting in line by the Amish teen girls working in the back of the bakery. They were singing beautiful a capella hymns while mixing huge vats of dough. Ole Dave even told us what to get for breakfast - sausage bread covered with sausage gravy and a Bavarian cream donut for me. I got the donut to go. Time to get the "h" out of Dodge, as we are turning into Oompaloompas. I did share my donut with Don, which was a true act of love, as this was a donut like you never had before! We might have been tempted to turn back around and stay in Middlebury/Shipshewanna just for the food, but we'd probably be contestants on The Biggest Loser within the year.

Travel was easy and we pulled into the Indianapolis KOA around 3:30. We're finding more campgrounds out in big converted fields, with RV next to RV. We're missing trees, rivers, bike paths and that "special" something that we found in NH, NY, Canada and PA. The campground was clean, had all the basics and our site had a gravel pad. We biked around the campground to work off some of that heaven-made donut.

Sunday, October 24th: Indianapolis Zoo and White River Gardens

Indianapolis brought out the "kid in us" for some reason and we decided to get outside and go to the zoo. It was a ZooBoo Day, where little kids dressed in their costumes and collected candy, while viewing the animals. We went as ourselves, thus no candy. The Indy Zoo is an older zoo, but they have kept it updated and had many new exhibits, with more to come. The zoo was decorated for Halloween, which made it an extra-special day. Having been former members of the Bronx Zoo in our NY days and having spent many weekend afternoons there, it was neat to see some of the same animals in different settings. The rhinos were more up-close and personal here, so I watched them for quite awhile. Poor guys, with such big, heavy horns - no wonder they are always keeping their heads down, looking at the ground. I don't remember seeing storks before, so that was fun, along with the beautiful flame-pink flamingos. Another favorite was the ring-tailed lemurs, playing around on their own little island. One little guy was in the Halloween spirit, carving a pumpkin. The meerkat stood up and checked us out - maybe his favorite pastime.


We did find Nemo, the clown fish!!!

Four hours in the zoo was enough and we enjoyed the walkabout, but we needed some adult calm to restore our souls. White River Gardens, next door to the zoo and part of our admission ticket, was calling to us. This small botanical garden was the perfect ending to a pleasant Sunday. We sat in the glass-enclosed conservatory to soak up the kid-less quiet among the plants and displays. They had a bottle tree in one area and I thought of Anne McCandlish, a neighbor on Mountain Drive, as she has created a few trees/bushes. I did not know the story behind the bottle tree (see pix below), did you? The boxwood knot gardens were new to us and really fun. After an hour stroll and the doors closing behind us, we took our serene-selves back to camp.


Time to save our favorite used wine bottles?

Knot Garden


Chillin' Frog

Monday, October 25th - R & R/Workday at Campground

Everyday can't be a play day, as there are still bills to pay, campground/travel planning, blog updates, grocery shopping, calls to make and just some plain old downtime. Today was a needed life organization day; not thrilling, but necessary.

Tuesday, October 26th - Bomb Storm and Children's Museum

A bad weather forecast for today kept us in Indianapolis an extra day. Don was listening to the local weather on TV as I was having my morning coffee in bed. He calmly said, "Lin, I think you need to get up and get dressed, as we may need to leave the trailer quickly." I threw on some clothes, we put P.T. in her carrier and all headed up to the camp store. I spoke with a few fellow campers on our way to the store and I was surprised they didn't know of the pending storm and tornado warnings. Don even knocked on our nearest neighbor's motor home and woke them up. They joined us in the store.

The storm, later called "A Weather Bomb," was moving over land at 80 miles an hour with winds gusting to 75 mph! It was spawning tornadoes all over Indiana. This was a historic, record setting storm with a low pressure reading equivalent to a category 3 hurricane! The last thing we wanted to do was stay in the trailer as it rocked and rolled. The end of the trailer took the brunt of the wind, which was better than it hitting side-on and possibly flipping it. There were evening news reports of destruction in our area near Greenfield, but we weathered it just fine hanging out in the cinder-block, two-windowed camp store.

Dark sky shows approaching storm and bending trees. Four-Bit is little trailer in background off nose of red car.

Since the day was gloomy and rainy, we thought a museum would be a good escape. Two days in the small trailer is a bit much and you can only sit so long. Someone told us the Children's Museum is really great and not-for-kids only. We asked when we paid our admission if we could rent a child, but they were all gone. Too bad we couldn't have had granddaughter Ella for the day. The museum claims to be the biggest and best children's museum in the world and it is kid-geared for sure. Think of what kids like and they had it - dinosaurs, trains, doll houses, planetarium, Skeletown (haunted house for Halloween), carousel, history of computer games (Pong, PacMan, etc.), Hall of Mirrors, etc. Our favorites were a special exhibit on Life in Egypt, History of the Barbie Doll and Celebrating the Power of the Child. The Dale Chilhuly blown glass tower, biggest blown glass sculpture in the world, was mighty impressive, too. We laid on a rotating couch to look up at the floating blown glass floor, with the rising sculpture above it. [Connie, remember going to the Chilhuly exhibit in Florida together a few years back? Helped me to know what artist's work was on display here.] By the time we left, the sun was out in full force and all memories of the scary morning storm forgotten.