Out of Indiana--4/11

4/11—It is wet, it is mostly cloudy, and it is 62 degrees. We got about 1.5 inches of rain last night, according to a park worker. As we drive along the highway south to Louisville, we see lots of muddy, muddy rivers out of their banks,Hannhhhhhhh//but we bu roads covered, fields flooded. This seems to be a wet spring in the south. And we are in the midst of the rain. We can see it ahead of us, and even when the rain has abated we get lots of water from passing trucks.

Come afternoon it clears and gets even warmer, at one point hitting 78. Diesel is running around $3.89 a gallon. We are hoping it will drop any day now. We see lower prices for ‘off-road diesel’. The winds create a challenge for us, particularly when we are driving on the narrow, winding Tennessee roads. And, surprisingly, we move back into Central Daylight Time. It is so hard to keep track of the time in this part of the country. We have decided to pass up a bike ride in Columbus, IN, because we are concerned about when we will arrive in Clarksville, TN. But I hadn’t realized that we actually had an extra hour.

Our home for the night—the Clarksville RV Park—is just off the interstate. We check in, get settled, Norb takes a nap, and I call my cousin Cindy Marczak. Cindy and I haven’t seen each other for 40 some years. I have some pictures and pillowcases from Uncle Al’s house for her and her sister Peggy. Cindy and her husband Walt come and pick us up at the Park. We go out to a Japanese restaurant, the kind that makes the meal into a show. Cindy and I talk, Norb and Walt talk. We get a tour of Clarksville, which is about 110,000 strong these days. It has a military base—Fort Campbell—and a college, which together brought them to Clarksville 28 years ago. Walt retired from the military and wanted a town near a military base, with a college so he could get his degree. They came, they saw, they bought a house and have been there ever since. They live in a lovely house getting gradually surrounded by the University. At this point they and their next door neighbor are all that is left of the area that doesn’t belong to the school.