Why Are You Here?

So right now I’m sitting in my parents’s house in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Crysta and I are here for the holidays, and things are pretty good right now. Of course, the road getting here was a little bumpy…

As on the road from Indiana to Wisconsin, I got rear-ended in Schererville, IN.

See, rather than just take the Interstate all the way, I usually get off of I-65 onto US30 in Merrilville - and I take that to 394 in Illinois (which feeds me onto the tollway). I do this, honestly, just to add some variety to the drive. It helps keep me awake.

Well, I was definitely awake this time.

I was stopped at a redlight on US30 when I saw a pair of headlights behind me in my rearview mirror. A pair of headlights that weren’t slowing down fast enough.

And then BLAM.

I meant to post this a few days ago, but I ended up a little busier than I anticipated. This last weekend, in celebration of our second Wedding Anniversary, Crysta and I decided to go out and do what we enjoy the most: exceptionally nerdy exploration. As the days go by, I think it’s becoming more and more evident that Crysta and I are secretly old people in disguise.

We took the short drive Northeast to Delphi, IN to check out Wabash-Erie Canal Park. The park is, frankly, kind of amazing. It’s built around a small remaining section of the Wabash-Erie Canal, around which they’ve built an educational park about that period in history.

There are historic buildings from the area that have been relocated to the grounds to create a “Pioneer Village” you can explore (including guided tours of the largest house on the grounds), an “Interpretive Center” museum detailing the history of the Canal, and - what may be one of the coolest parts - a canal boat ride on a 2/3 scale recreation of a canal boat.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating, that one of the things my wife Crysta and I are trying to do more often is explore the area around us. In this day and age, it’s exceptionally easy to stay home and just live in our comfortable, insular bubbles.

In our continued efforts, this Saturday we decided to venture over to the local Zoo here in Lafayette, IN. It’s not a large facility, but as it’s free, checking it out seemed like a no-brainer.

I was actually quite impressed by the Columbian Park Zoo when I got there. Again, it may not have the diversity of the big city zoos I grew up with (nor the larger animals), but the habitats were modern, well maintained, and overall it was a really cool place.

I wish I had more to write about the place, but I don’t really have the ability to come up with descriptors better than “It was a zoo,” “It was cool,” or “It was free.”

On Sunday we decided to head out once again into the random world surrounding the town, and we went on a drive out of the city on one of the myriad of highways that pass through Lafayette. Venturing down Highway 52, we came across a lone historical marker on the side of the road.

The marker listed the location of the first successful C-section. The curious thing was the language, which started out with “On the kitchen table of this house” (emphasis mine). I don’t know if you can see this, but in my picture… there is no house. Researching online, I think there used to be a house there (as this page from 2001 shows a house there), but lord knows what happened in the last decade to it.