American Discovery Trail: Finally, Indiana

With a bit of a push these last two days, I finally made it to the Indiana border. I spent four months and walked 522 miles in Ohio. It will take me less than that to get across both Indiana and Illinois, as the trail apparently doesn't wander around so much for the next two states.

I have now finished twenty segments of the trail, and tomorrow I will hit 2.5 million steps. That is less than one quarter of the way to the end, but by the end of June, I should be about a quarter of the way. This last year was not the most productive because of my long vacations last summer and fall, so as I approach a year on the trail, I expect to make better progress in future years.

When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash

Then I long for my Indiana home.

From "Back Home Again in Indiana."

The Indy 500 race is held every year on the Sunday before Memorial Day, and they sing that song before the race each year, the way that they sing the national anthem before other sporting events. Mom always wanted to turn on coverage of the race in time to hear the song, which was performed by Jim Nabors most years between 1972 and 2014.

 I used Google street view to get this picture, which is probably the house where my grandparents lived and my mom grew up. The picture makes it hard to tell, but it is in the right place, so probably that is it. Until I was eight and we moved to California, I think I spent more time in Indiana than any state besides Ohio, and this is where I spent most of that time. I barely remember anything else about the state.

As I recall, we would spend a week with my mother's parents each year. They lived in a place called Swalls Indiana, just outside of Terre Haute. Swalls was my mother's maiden name, and the community was named for her family. Swalls and Terre Haute are on the far west side of Indiana, and Akron is on the east side of Ohio, so we drove almost all the way across both states to get there.

I remember collecting eggs from the chickens; playing in the barn, the corn cribs, and the corn fields; and sitting on a big screened-in porch. There was a store at the intersection of two highways, walking distance from the house. If we travelled around Indiana at all, I do not remember that.

If we were to walk straight west across the state, we would come close to Swalls, Indiana, but we will not go that way. The trail takes us northwest, from southern Ohio to the far northwest corner of Indiana, near Chicago and Lake Michigan. The trail covers exactly 250 miles, and it will take about two months to get to Illinois.