At an RV Park in central Florida we met the local resident Sandhill crane.
This crane obviously owned the park, as we saw him walking down the center of roads and blatantly ignoring the accepted RV park protocol of not walking through another camper’s site. I was only about 3 feet from him for the close up head shot.
Indiana’s Statehood Bicentennial was celebrated in 2016. The remnants of that celebration can be seen all over the state in the form of 5 feet tall fiberglass bisons. The in.gov website states: “Indiana Association of United Ways was the proud sponsor of the statewide Bison-tennial Public Art Project. This legacy project helped celebrate Indiana’s 200th birthday by decorating and displaying 5-foot-tall fiberglass bison with an end goal of at least one – if not a herd – of bison on display in each of Indiana’s 92 counties.”
Courthouse with Tower Tree in background
This side says DECATUR
This side says COUNTY
This Bison-tennial beast has scenes from Decatur County painted on the hide. Most of the ones in counties around the state have some depictions of local places, schools or attractions. We’ve seen a few of these colorfully decorated statues around the state, as each of the 92 counties received one or more to custom decorate. This one we found at the center of Greensburg on the Decatur County Courthouse grounds, and is pictured above with its information sign. Note that the header photo show the bison in the raw as they were delivered back in 2016.
Very informative.
Let me start this post with a disclaimer – I am a newbie to avalanche terrain and only have level 1 training. I am not a reliable resource for avalanche safety. I decided to write this post anyways because I think a lot of people go out into the backcountry in the winter without understanding the risk. I went snowshoeing and camping for 3 years and told myself I was safe because I “checked the forecast” and only went on popular or “safe” trails. I was pretty conservative, but in retrospect, I didn’t actually know how to read the avalanche bulletins and I was unknowingly venturing into avalanche terrain. Without taking a course, I feel it’s hard to get the proper education on identifying avalanche terrain and my main goal with this post is to convince you to take the AST1 course. If your internal reasoning sounds anything like mine…
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The old wheelbarrow has acted as a raised firepit. Filled with rainwater, the fire wood had provided a perch for squirrels to use for drinking. Now after two days that never reached above 20 degrees, we have the result pictured.
We recently enjoyed some fabulous ice cream sundaes at the opulent and historic Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor and Museum in Columbus, Indiana. In addition to the antique soda fountains and cabinets filled with vintage flavor jars, there are several beautiful Welte Orchestrion automatic music machines displayed.
Welte Orchestrion, left. This was during our April 2021 visit.
Welte machines have a long and detailed history. Note that the term Orchestrion was coined by Welte in the 1850’s. Some refer to these types of automatic music machines as orchestrations.
Fully functional, coin operated
Play list
Large and fancy, see the clock on top?
We have been to Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor and Museum twice now. Here are the links to our posts about each visit. The April 2021 post has photos of lots of the vintage things in the shop. Our visit a couple of days ago will make you want to visit and have a hot fudge sundae.
January 2021 was the start of the second year of the pandemic. Now we’re 12 months later and pandemic is still a word we see daily. Sigh…
January 2021 saw us waiting for COVID vaccines to become available for people our age. We did get our first dose of the COVID vaccine in February. With the pandemic raging, we did not go out much. Safer to stay close to home, enjoying our backyard and the occasional trip to a winery or brewery. We did discover the fun of working on those thousand piece jig saw puzzles!
Backyard bird watching
One of our sons got married in August in Columbus, Ohio. That was a fun party! All of our kids and grandkids were able to attend, the first time in a while when we all got together. We did decide that after we were fully vaccinated we would fly out to Seattle and down to Austin to see our long distant families. So we were off to Seattle for 3 weeks followed by a 3 week trip to Austin.
We did have most enjoyable times while we traveled and stayed with our families. Lots of neat restaurants, wineries, breweries and other local attractions. We did not use our RV for these trips not wanting to be on the road for that long a time. All in all, 2021 was a strange year. Hopefully 2022 will see less COVID problems. Maybe we’ll be able to get some more RV travel in!
The photo does not do justice to the displays seen here
This same house had impressive Halloween decorations. See those photos here.
The wine shop at Austin Bergstrom airport just happened to be next to our gate for our flight back to Indiana today. We had some more Texas grape to glass wine! (The cheese and bread plate was also very good)
Enjoying supper at Jack Allen’s restaurant in Austin
We’ve been here a week and Sher is having a ball. We’re both having way too much fun.
Roadtirement 