Decatur, Indiana

November 25-December 15, 2017

We surprised ourselves by driving the 510 miles from Chattanooga to Decatur in one day.  Maybe we were energized by this nice view of Cincinnati. [We’ve learned not to see the windshield splats.  Hope you can ignore them, too.]

Or maybe it was easier just to drive on in than find a campground.

We turned the coach in at the REV Service Center at 6:00 a.m. Monday, November 27.  With Kaela in her playpen, we hung out in the lobby (it’s really pretty comfortable–lots of couches and TVs, free washers and dryers) until we could check in to the hotel our service advisor had found for us.  The hotels in Decatur were full because of a boat company’s convention, so we were given a room in Berne, 12 miles south.  The room was clean but had almost no storage for our carload of clothes, cat supplies, dulcimer, music, computer and paperwork.  We lived out of shopping bags and some boxes we picked up behind the Dollar Tree.

Portland, Indiana

We drove the sixteen miles south from Berne to Portland to do some exploring and found this mural.  Elwood Haynes?  America’s first car?  We had to find out more.  Haynes did create the first automobile design viable for mass production and created the first automobile in the United States built specifically to move under its own power.  He also was a huge promoter of natural gas and helped fuel rapid growth in that industry.  Finally, he put his creative efforts to work in the invention of stainless steel and stellite (a cobalt-chromium alloy used for such things as saw teeth and machine parts) .

Portland is in Jay County, the only county in the U.S. named for the first Chief Justice John Jay.  We visited the Jay County Historical Museum.

It’s interesting and maybe a little disconcerting to find things we’ve used to be museum-worthy.

             Dave used a desk like this one in first grade in Casper, Wyoming.

                Jane had Lincoln Logs

We don’t remember buggies like this one delivering the mail but loved this one all decked out for Christmas.

The fragment pictured above is from a regimental flag of the Union Army carried at the Battle of Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga by men of the 100th Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry.  Dave’s great, great-grandfather fought in the Battle of Missionary Ridge with Company K of the Missouri 15th Infantry Regiment.  When Jane was born, her family lived on Missionary Ridge.

Neither Jane nor Dave has a personal connection to the piano pictured above. It was purchased by Jay County residents in the 1850s.  The photographs and candlesticks belonged to the same family as the piano.

Albert Rupel (1880-1905), a resident of Jackson County, designed the flying machine reconstructed in the model pictured above.  He had read about airplane design and built his own plane in 1902.  It was designed to be pulled by an automobile, but in a trial, the car stalled and a team of draft horses took over, lifting the aircraft to treetop height.  Rupel was researching possible engines for his craft when he stepped on a nail, developed tetanus and subsequently died.  The Wright Brothers, whose first successful powered flight had taken place in 1903, were pallbearers at his funeral.