Kristine's parents graciously agreed to watch the girls for an afternoon, night, and morning while we celebrated our anniversary together. We spent the afternoon at the Tippecanoe Battlefield park. The park is the site of a battle in the early 1800's between two Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and the Prophet, and the US military forces led by William Henry Harrison. I hadn't realized this until we went there, but it's also the site of the annual Indiana Fiddler's Gathering (something I've learned about since getting into folk music, and which I have friends who attend regularly, but still remains on my to-do list).
Kristine and I spent some time hiking here when we were dating while students at Purdue. It was fun to go back, although the park, like the rest of West Lafayette, has changed significantly since I left in 1999. If the girls had been with us, the picture of the eagle might have included one or more of us copying its spread-wings pose.
We took a leisurely walk along the creek. In and out was just over 4 miles.
This was our first encounter with Indiana wildlife on our hike. It was also our least exciting. More on the exciting encounter later.
One mental adjustment we continually made during our time in the US this summer was getting used to how big everything is. This bridge is a case in point.
I'll grant that the bridge is for I-65, so it's not entirely fair to compare it with one of the stone bridges we'd go through on a hike around Melbourne (like this one, for example).
It's still massive though.
Our agenda for the hike was pretty open. The plan was to walk for a while, then turn around to head back and grab dinner. Turning around ended up getting dictated by this point where the path crossed the creek. Sandals on our feet plus desire to keep feet dry = go no further.
Our trip to the US began with the adventure of the missing passport. It contained an extremely full 10 days of visiting friends in Indianapolis, family in West Lafayette, running errands in Indianapolis, and me getting three days of work in the office. It was refreshing to have a peaceful place to walk and talk with Kristine.
Not entirely refreshing. We found this little fellow lying on the path on our way back. Not just on the path. Right in the middle of the path. Kristine assured me that snakes are rarely, if ever, poisonous in Indiana, and that venomous snake bites is an extremely uncommon topic in her healthcare circles. That didn't do anything to calm my pulse. Flashing through my mind were all the warnings about mambas, cobras, and puff adders from my time in Kenya (including one particularly hair-raising time when a snake about this size poked its head out of a basket in our garage that I was just getting ready to reach into). I also read the Sugar Creek Gang books as a kid. I know about the copperheads that the gang encountered along Sugar Creek in Indiana. We encountered a snake next to a creek in Indiana. Hence, my mind said snake = bad. If my Kenyan training had held true, I probably would have grabbed a stick and killed the dude. Instead, we both stepped around and moved on. Actually, Kristine stepped around because she could squeeze under the bushes blocking the edge of the path here. I had to step over the tail because the left side of the path didn't have space for my 6'5" frame. This resulted in even further elevation to my heart rate, although it did subside once we were well on our way. My father-in-law looked at the photo later. He said the snake was a Racer, and that they're not aggressive or poisonous.
Things not captured on photo: excellent dinner at the Parthenon restaurant and lovely stay at the Pheasant Inn B&B in Fowler (it baffles me that there are no longer any B&B's in Lafayette or West Lafayette with the amount of student and family traffic around the university and athletic events, but there you go). Friday morning we drove back into West Lafayette and grabbed coffee at the Vienna Cafe just off campus. This was a favorite jaunt of ours as students when we were dating. Even though we've been to West Lafayette to see Kristine's parents many times during our 14 years of marriage, we rarely spend time around the Purdue campus. This was a fun trip down memory lane.
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