Clinton Lake and Indianapolis

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then I set up the gadget for watering my plants while I'm away. I got this for a low price at a silent auction some time ago, and it seemed like the right time to try it. When I set it up, one of the tubes came off, and water went everywhere, but I got it fixed. Then I talked to Tiffy, who had been visiting her sister in California. She took a picture for me of an abandoned jewelry shop:

It's a crystal Niko! She said maybe it's there to protect the jewelry store, but there's nothing left to rob it of except this gorgeous crystal Evil Eye Protector.

This morning the plant watering contraption seemed to work, but I had to move part of it, so I stopped it and started it again. Then I watered the plants that aren't hooked up to it, so I was paranoid that I had jiggled something out of place, so I had to start it and stop it AGAIN. This meant that instead of being watered twice today, those plants will be watered four times. I hope they don't get overwatered...

We hit the road and drove through Illinois, but somehow I missed the nuclear reactor we always see to the west. We did see the big wind farm, and also several alerts for an endangered person in a silver Honda, and if we saw it, we were supposed to call 9111. Is that for bigger emergencies than 911? 

We stopped for lunch at the restaurant in La Salle with the delicious parmesan-encrusted whitefish, and it's still just as good as we remembered. Then we drove quite a while to get to Clinton Lake Recreation Area, which was beautiful. Here are some photos of the sunset we saw there. Travalon took more with his good camera, which I will hopefully post tomorrow.

We got a lot of steps there, and a flock of at least a dozen pelicans flew overhead, so that felt magical. It felt less magical when we stopped at a rest stop after dark and were greeted by a wildly barking dog who was fortunately on a leash. Just outside of Indianapolis we stopped at a barbecue joint that was clearly a local business, and we had wings, macaroni and cheese, and collard greens that were all really tasty. Then we drove by Indianapolis, which has three big, sparkly buildings just southwest of downtown that look really pretty but are probably something industrial. We could see the lights of downtown and passed right by the stadium where the Colts play. We were originally trying to get to Louisville tonight, but with the time change we lost an hour, and it just got too late, so we are stopped in Columbus, Indiana. At least the hotel pool was open late, so we got to swim for twenty minutes, and our room has a hot tub so we enjoyed that too. There is Mass at 9:30 at a church seven minutes away, so that's perfect too, as long as we can get up and get going...

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