Wauseon to the Indiana Dunes
Our laundry could wait no longer. The bag of dirty laundry was keeping us awake by rustling at night. We had noticed a coin laundry in our circuit of Wauseon looking for a motel, so we went back to it.
With three machines washing our clothes, we walked to the closest food outlet - a combined KFC and A&W "All American Food" burger joint. Hence my breakfast was a chilli dog, and Debbie’s was a chicken burger.
A&W prides itself on its root beer, so I had a cup. It still tastes of medicine, but I think it’s a taste I might be able to acquire with considerable effort.
When we returned to the laundrette, our washes were all on their final spin. A very nicely maintained establishment, their high quality driers meant the whole wash, eat and dry was done in under an hour, and we were on our way.
The North West of Ohio is very flat indeed, and our choice of road: Alt-20 was very straight.
We passed into Indiana, passing a number of cycling Amish folks (no doubt on their way to the bowling alley) and classic American barns.
After buying some petrol, we checked our receipt to verify the time. It’s always confusing when you cross a state line because sometimes the timeline coincides and sometimes it doesn’t; some areas observe daylight savings and some don’t. It turned out we had gained an hour — so we’d done our laundry in no time at all.
The petrol station sold kerosene. We’ve never seen that before.
Indiana, of course, brings one thing to mind. You know what it is. Yes you do. Four wheels. The smell of petrol. That’s right, it’s America’s largest manufacturer of RVs. We visited the RV and Mobile Home Hall of Fame in Elkhart. It was interesting to see how Eminem’s mum must live.
One mobile home was bigger than some of the flats we’ve lived in (I’m looking at you Hafren Close, Rubery).
We also saw some architects models of inspired designs for high-rise multistorey trailer parks.
The core of each tower is a helix up which the vehicles can be driven. Why were these never built?
It was an interesting stop, and I’d like to thank the people who made it possible:
Next order of business was lunch, and we visited our first Taco Bell of the holiday. The combination of the server’s strong accent and her inability to understand our perfectly normal accents, led to us accidentally ordering three meals between the two of us. It took great resolve and effort to get the last of it down our gullets, but manage we did.
After our meal, we looked outside and noticed it was raining hard. The car park, not designed for drainage at this rate, looked like a lake. We decided to sit out the shower, and spent ten minutes feeling the building shake with the thunder, and watching forked lightning on the horizon. Eventually it eased off for long enough for us to dash back to the car.
We drove on to Michigan City (still in Indiana) and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. At the National Park visitor centre, a nice man pointed us in the direction of some motels (outside the park), and suggested a walk we could take in the dunes.
First things first — we took his directions and found two motels. Both looked pretty good, but we plumped for Al and Sally’s motel. It’s clean, it has 70s decor and nice neon.
We checked the room, then went straight to Mount Baldy, the suggested dune for a walk. It is a large dune.
It turned out there were two trails: one around the dune, and one over the top. We rashly decided to go over the top: it’s one continuous, steep climb, and with every step up, you slide back half a step. At the top, there’s a nice view of Lake Michigan, and a gentle slope down to the lakeshore.
We might have stayed for a while on the beach, were it not for the evil biting insects, undeterred by DEET. We paddled around to the flattish woodland trail back around the dune.
When we got back to the motel, we spent some time in the motel pool, cooling down, and washing sand off. It even had a rickety water slide, which was fun.
We ate almost next door at "Pumps on 12", a former roadhouse turned restaurant. We had reasonably local bottled microbrews (although the menu had Newcastle Brown categorised as a microbrew…) I had tequila lime chicken, and Debbie had BBQ chicken pizza. It was OK, and if it hadn’t been for the beer it would have been tremendously cheap.
Now for a relaxed evening absorbing American culture via the TV. CSI Miami, I think.
We just watched a local news item. It turns out that timezones and daylight savings are a hot issue in Indiana at the moment. There’s moves afoot to change things for next April, but the process of adopting these changes is fraught with local government red tape. Apparently the US Dept of Transport is the final arbiter.
If you’re reading, Indiana, say NO to daylight savings. It’s rubbish. Lead the way and don’t do it.