Evansville is for Family

The drive to Evansville was long and fast.  I love 70 mph speed limits.  Mom, however, was not so crazy about them and had me keep it under 75mph, when I would have preferred 79, eh, one makes concessions and picks their battles.

I started a score card of all the road kill deer I saw.  I'm up to 9 hash marks.  That's a lot of deer, and those are just the ones I saw in the 4 hours of daylight we drove in. 

Mom and I were the last to reach Evansville, rolling in 20 minutes after Dad.  It was a welcome port with chili and chicken stew waiting for us on the stove and Dad, Kathie, Chris and Alice all sitting around the kitchen table playing catch up.

The next week was spent whiling away the hours in a most agreable manner.  I did not catch up on blogging, much to my chagrin... but I did catch up on any sleep I might have missed in the last month.  Going to bed around 10pm and sleeping until 8am, ain't it the life. This was my bed, as I arrived to it.

We based our days around meals, something us Huus' do VERY well:




And sitting around the fire in the cozy den:

We did a couple other things, we walked to Angel Mounds.

We didn't go in/around/thru.  It was cold and snowing and I for one was dreaming of eggnog and rum.
The trees here in Indiana are quite different than what I'm used to.  I'm really enjoying noting the different shape that foliage takes here.  There are "grapevines" that look like Tarzan's mode of transportation and poison ivy that winds itself up trees in a hairy, scary fashion looking like a tree itself.

We helped with some yard work, wood stacking and log splitting around my Uncle and Aunt's house. We had to earn our keep, after all. 

Most of the logs to be split were so massive that they couldn't be drove with a single wedge.  I watched my dad try to bury the edge of the maul, striking great blows, over and over only to have the maul bounce off the cut wood face.  I couldn't help but giggle, so I busied myself carrying wood over to the shed so as not to aggravate him. 

One day we drove over to Newburgh, Indiana. Ogling yarn stores as always and pawing thru bookstores and antiques shops, then down to the Ohio River to meandering along beside it as it flows muddily by.

 These smokestacks belong to an aluminum factory. They generate their own electricity because the amount that is used is astronomical!  So everyone, lesson here: R-E-C-Y-C-L-E, recycle, recycle.

This is the old Lock. We went and visited the New Lock which is much more massive and up to date.  There are many locks on the Ohio River because the gradient of the river changes. 

In Pittsburgh, PA the Ohio River is 710 feet above sea level, by the time it gets to Illinios it's dropped 420 feet. Granted it has nearly a thousand miles to make this drop.  But Locks and Dams on the Ohio River make the passage of millions of pounds of cargo on thousands of barges feasible.

My final morning in Evansville, New Year's Eve, we all went to Cracker Barrel.  This is the restuarant Chris and Alice go to for breakfast every Sunday come hell, high water or tornados.  I have heard about Chris' love of Cracker Barrel all my life, but since I'd never been to the midwest before I didn't realize that they are EVERYWHERE! I figured there were probably 3 of them.  I was wrong.  So we dipped into their tradition and enjoyed breakfast with them at their favorite spot.

I was slated to be on the road by 11am but a fluke of Rob's plane being delayed kept me with my family until 2pm.  We took advantage of the time and went for a hike to work off breakfast.  We drove to Kentucky, just a 15 minute drive and hiked through the lucious jungle of John James Audubon's home stomping grounds. We saw four deer.  I loved the alien terrain of vines and water eroded hills and valleys.

I shoved off from Evansville with a tearful good-bye.  I won't be seeing my parents for three months and that's a long time.  But as Claire says: "I'll see you soon, and I'll talk to you sooner."