After Kentucky, I've spent most of my life in Indiana. Weekend visits with my dad, summers spent at Aunt Tina's pool, that time we lived with my grandpa, vacations spent at Aunt Becky's, Fourth of July lawn mower races, that addiction I had to my grandma. Indiana is to be credited with taming my city kid and teaching me humility. It's where I got comfortable with being dirty and fell in love with the smell of basements, where a big wheel and a drainage ditch meant endless entertainment.
While it's got a special place in my heart, Indiana is not at the top of my list of Places to Visit. Unless Heather mentions photographing covered bridges for two years in a row and I finally agree to go with her to the
Covered Bridge Festival in Rockville, Ind.
Let's paint a picture of Rockville, Ind., shall we?
Population 2,765, 98.16% of which is white.
Home of the late
Morris K. Jessup, UFO conspiracy theorist.
Known as the Covered Bridge Capital of the World.
Rockville is the seat of Parke Co., which has 31 covered bridges. There used to be 52 1/2 (the 1/2 one crossed a county line, and since Indiana is nothing if not fair, they don't claim that whole bridge)... can you imagine the fame of Rockville if those other 21 1/2 were still around? Mayhem.
The "festival" has become pockets of flea markets/giant yard sales hosted by several of the "towns" in Parke Co. Heather and I weren't really interested in funnel cakes or Amish brooms, so we tried to avoid the traffic clusters around the towns and see as many bridges as we could in three hours. We raced along gravel roads, stirring up dust and taking breaks to pee in fields, and managed to explore five bridges in all. To keep it exciting, we took a different pose photo at each one. We are animals.
In case the bridges don't get your blood going, we also stumbled across this old timey cemetery with graves from the 1800s. I had as much fun taking photographs here as I did at the bridges, and if the sun hadn't been on its way down, we could've dilly dallied here for an hour.
After our whirlwind bridge tour, I was all ready to lay down some money and spend the night at the jail inn. But Heather was dead set on camping and there was no vacancy at the jail, so after dinner at the Thirty Six Saloon (one of two restaurants in Rockville), we went to
Rockville Lake Park. Heather pitched the tent while I made the fire. I got kicked out of Brownies in the second grade and I don't think Heather's mom would have ever paid for Girls Scouts, but it turns out we are a couple of bonafide outdoorsy types. We were drinking beer in our camping chairs by a toasty warm fire in under 30 minutes. We even had a little visit from a glowy eyed raccoon.
If I'm having this much fun at something as senior citizen as a Covered Bridge Festival, maybe I should start going to Bingo. Or take up Bridge.
5 comments:
you weren't in the brownies. we couldn't afford the brownies. you only wish you were kicked out of the brownies.
and I am for sure signing Renee up for the brownies. you can take her to a meeting or a camp out, yes, that is a great idea. you can be her brownie auntie. and you and i never had our real night out so you owe me.
I was in the brownies... for like a week!! I got kicked out because mom always forgot to pick me up from meetings. That's a running thing in my life... calling the therapist now.
And I will take Renee to campouts, but you should know she'll be a masterful firebuilder and boys will be jealous of her and she may be accused of being a lesbian with her mad skillz.
Hello, Therapist...
Um, bingo is kind of awesome. And if you start playing bridge, I'd love to learn.
Love,
An old soul.
How do you cram so much stuff in one day? This sounds like a blast.
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