Is your life too hectic? Are you tired of the hustle and bustle and keeping up with fast flow of traffic in the collar counties of Chicago? Are you ready for another episode of on the road with Charles Kuralt?
This Harvest marks the fourth straight year my wife, Cora, and I have traveled to Shawnee national Forest in October. Given that I have a self diagnosed tendinitis of my right ankle, hiking the trails in the forest were not the centerpoint of this trip. Much of the trip centered on southern Indiana, featuring the Spring Mill Inn state Park, and French lick. The state park features a Pioneer Village with a slew of buildings built in the early 1800’s. Living history displays are present in many of them, but the real centerpiece is the massive, functioning grain mill. The thousand acre Park also features a Bedford/oolitic limestone inn with 71 rooms.
Lawrence County Indiana is considered the limestone capital of the world. After our navigation errantly sent us to the massive Lehigh cement plant we managed to make it two more miles to the state park and our home for the next three days. With only three hours before closing time we made sure to return the next day so I could learn all I could about this amazing interpretive site.
They still use water to turn the water wheel to grind corn meal on the hour every hour and on Saturday afternoons to operate a sawmill. Being a former carpenter and enthusiast of old buildings and history, I could not help but marvel and study the construction of the massive three-story building and many other structures on the site.
Just outside of French lick Indiana is the West Baden Springs Hotel. The renovated hotel features a historic 300 foot diameter atrium that for close to 50 years was the largest dome structure in the United States. I made sure to include a visit, as a tourist and not book an overnight stay. We considered the price of the hotel rooms out of reach for a farmer who sold his corn for $4.60, and is buying $7/gallon diesel fuel to harvest it.
The trip from Mitchell, Indiana to West Baden Springs was an a very interesting route. Our navigation took us down multiple county highways that were more crooked than then a piece of cavatappi pasta. We went by some large scale turkey farms, lumber mills and Amish farms. We saw Cattle grazing on pasture, massive combines harvesting crops, 100’ long clothelines drying clothes and Amish buggies on the road pulling rough-sawn lumber with a team of horses. The scenery was so beautiful and the roads so curvy that we rarely went the speed limit.
We finally made it to Shawnee Forest on the last day of our trip after visiting old Shawneetown, Illinois and historic buildings abandoned after the historic 1937 flood, Golconda and Vienna, Illinois and unsuccessful attempts of finding Bigfoot in the national forest near Garden of the Gods.
There is much more that I would like to include about this recent trip, but it’s time to get back outside of my A-frame cabin and dangle my feet in the hot tub and continue scanning the edge of the forest for Bigfoot.
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