TRAVEL DAY: CHARLESTOWN, INDIANA TO NEW HARMONY, INDIANA.
Day 37 – We had a lot to do this morning! It was a travel day, and in addition to the normal packing up to leave, we had so many extra chores. We really should’ve done some of this yesterday, but we were gone most of the day. Because we’d be using the Honda so much, Rob had cleaned it out to leave plenty of room for Pam & her dogs plus for the items we’d be shopping for – two bags of books, 40 lbs. of kitty litter, a decent-sized restock of groceries, etc., plus some items did stay in the back of the Honda. The kayaks were taken off the top of the car and the bikes removed from the rear. Before leaving, he had to load back up the bikes and kayaks. He had to do some rearranging in the car and in the storage areas of the RV for new/replacement items, taking again into consideration the weight ratios, front-to-back. I had to find some way to fit the foods we purchased plus all our leftovers in the refrigerator (this is not a full-size house refrigerator) and rearrange the heavily fish-packed freezer to fit in 20 Beyond Burger patties (this is a fairly small freezer – I long for a full-sized one, but where would we put it?!) Anyway, this was how the morning went – almost like packing for the original trip all over again, on a smaller scale. Large-sized canned tomatoes take up lots of room. Ditto, 3 cases of cat food and a 17-lb. bag of dry food. Wah, wah, wah.
Already tired before leaving, we departed Charlestown State Park after emptying trash and dumping tanks which were as full as they could possibly get. It was 11:10 a.m., 64 degrees, cloudy and windy. On the drive we had another Ladybug invasion, not as bad as previously, but I was kept fairly busy BugZooka-ing the bugs, and Rob released them every time we stopped, which was often. Better than killing them and having a million smashed bugs to clean up!
On the way to our destination, we stopped at Jersey Mike’s to get sandwiches for tonight’s dinner. No way did we want to cook anything. We stopped to get a propane fill-up for the RV and for our spare tank. And we stopped at a rest stop for lunch and a kitty break. We ate our leftovers from various dinners in Louisville – it was like a gourmet-laden meal with small dishes from around the world. Awesome! We finished it off with a leftover decadent dessert of Bourbon Dark Chocolate Creme Brulee. Refueled and feeling better, we drove on.
Our trip was from southeastern Indiana to southwestern Indiana. New Harmony is on the Indiana/Illinois border. Since we were skirting Louisville, Kentucky in the beginning, traffic was heavy. It got better as we drove further on Route 64. The first 2/3 of the trip was rolling hills; the last third was flat farmland. As we neared the Park, the fall colors were brighter. That was nice. But it remained extremely overcast and cloudy, so the pictures weren’t as bright as they could’ve been. The high today was 68 nicely-warm degrees. It’s supposed to rain all night.
We happily discovered that we had crossed from the Eastern Standard Time zone to the Central Standard Time zone, giving us an extra hour. We’d really needed some relaxation time, and now we had an extra hour. YAAAA! We arrived at Harmonie State Park, south of Route 64 below New Harmony at 2:50 p.m. (CST). We did not have reservations, but we’d called the Park in advance and were told we wouldn’t need them; it would be first come, first served. We drove through the campground and it was almost empty. We found an empty loop and nabbed a great campsite. Rob unhooked the Honda & we drove back to the Campground Office and registered for one night. It seemed a shame to just stay one night; the Park was very nice and totally quiet. But we were looking forward to visiting a campground in southern Missouri for a week of visiting one of our favorite places: Mingo National Wildlife Refuge, and we really wanted to get there soon.
We let the cats out and they immediately settled in, liking it here right away. As usual, they ran to the screened door and lined up, watching for Rob to come back inside from doing the outside chores. I actually thought they’d start wagging their tails – they are like dogs, waiting for their people to come home. We have actually stayed at this campground before, twice, one-night stays. It is an excellent stopover coming to or going from a visit with Pam. Someday we’ll stay longer than one night.
We unpacked and set up. Rob discovered that the cell phone booster wasn’t working. He tested the cable and it had 12 volts, called the company we got it from, got a return authorization (the booster is fairly new, aarrgh!), decided to take another look and found that the power cable was intermittent – it was not the fault of the booster. So, rather than relaxing, Mr. Fix-it fixed it. At 4:45 p.m. (CST), fully ready to relax, we sat down with our beer & wine. The cats were sleeping off their ride in the RV. All was great.
For more detailed information about Harmonie State Park, including some history of the area, click here.