We left the Indianapolis area this morning, and instead of traveling on the freeway, we took US-31 north past Kokomo and South Bend.  On this route we were traveling through more rural settings and it was peaceful.

I had an email from Roseann Curran, one of our co-workers from Wagon Trail Campground.  She and her husband are headed there as well and she said they were going to spend tonight in Shipshewana, IN where there are lots of quilts and fabric stores.  I’m green with envy!  It would have been nice to take a detour and see Elkhart, Goshen and Shipshewana, all places I’ve heard about in Mennonite circles.  There’s also a lot of Amish in the area.  However, that detour was a little too far away from our route.

One thing I have been waiting for that finally happened today was to start seeing barn quilts again.  I saw three, but I missed one and almost missed the other two:

This one features a 9-patch barn quilt.

I couldn’t quite make out the pattern on this barn quilt, but the roof was interesting too.

We crossed over the Tippecanoe River today and Mark and I remembered the slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”  We couldn’t remember what that reference was too, so I looked it up.  It was a campaign slogan for William Henry Harrison and John Tyler who were the first Whigs to win the presidential office in 1840.  The “Tippecanoe” reference came from Harrison’s background in the Indian wars in Indiana.  He was an older man and the Democrats tried to discredit him as being happier in a log cabin with a hard cider than in the presidency.  The Whigs took that slur and turned it around to mean that Harrison was a man of the common people.  They even served hard cider wherever he stumped for the presidency.  How many of you remembered that from your history lessons?

Tippecanoe River

We crossed into Michigan and it was a relatively short drive from the border to South Haven which is next to Lake Michigan.  When we left Greenfield this morning there was a bit of a nip in the air for the first time on this trip.  We got to our campsite in South Haven and it’s downright cold.  The guy at the registration desk said that yesterday it was 80º F, so this is a bit of a shock for the locals as well.

Several of you asked how Kimba is doing today.  I combed her and combed her once we got here, which annoys her, and I’ve given her the medicine, which she’s not overly fond of.  Still, she didn’t make that wretched wheezy/coughy sound today.  I hope that means that the hairball inside her is beginning to find its way out.