Dryland

Today was a "stay home" day for the most part on this Indiana vacation of ours.  My sister has a couple of mini-roadtrip activities planned for the next two days, so today we decided to stay local.  The kids played outside this morning while the adults did some visiting in the three-season porch.  This afternoon we went to the city park/beach on the shores of Lake Winona so the youngest kids could swim, then we walked around and checked out the little shops in the area.  My sister gave us a car tour around the city of Warsaw on the way home from the beach.  Yard games in the late afternoon, card games this evening.  Plenty of activity without having to spend plenty of time in a car.

In yesterday's post I made mention of watching fireworks over one of Indiana's five lakes (which, incidentally, was the same lake the kids swam in today).  The crack about "five lakes" was mostly in jest......but not really.  We passed a few beautiful lakes in western Wisconsin Friday evening, but from Madison to Chicago to here we rarely saw a lake, or even rivers for that matter.  Remember the movie Waterworld?  If not, that's ok; only about 48 people saw it.  Waterworld was a futuristic story about a flooded Earth, whose few remaining survivors believed in one last unflooded area called "Dryland" - I'm thinking they should have looked in the Southeast Wisconsin/Northern Illinois-Indiana region.

Apparently Indiana has "hundreds" lakes, but you'd have a hard time proving it by me.  I know Wisconsin has plenty of good fishing waters.  I don't care enough to research Illinois lake stats.  Bottom line is this:  I've now made two trips this direction, and both times the one glaring characteristic of the land I've driven through is how lake-less it is.  It's easy - so easy - to take lakes for granted after spending my whole life in Minnesota, where it seems an hour in any direction from any point in the state has at least one lake, if not dozens.  And if you drive that hour to that lake, you'll likely pass dozens of boats behind vehicles.  And that's the other thing I notice when I travel through this area - no boats on the roads.  Different region, different landscape, different lifestyle.  How sad.

Tomorrow we head to downtown Chicago by train.  Gonna sightsee on foot for the day.  Probably get mugged or killed while we're there.  I've got a cocktail of enthusiasm and fear going on inside me towards this activity.  Hope to return here tomorrow evening with happy tales.