How amazing – the time had actually arrived! At 8:30 a.m. Fred’s VW Tiguan was packed and ready to take off from Afton VA to Salt Lake City, Utah. Sarah Leech, our Waynesboro friend, Rosalie Kerr, my Smith College roommate, and I were off on a ladies’ toot cross country to take the car to our fifteen-year-old grandson.
AFTON, VA: Rosalie, Sarah, me: Three amigos westward bound: Last stop Eliza and Jen’s house.
Fred’s sister, Izzy Goff, and her daughter, Perry Goff are part of the team staying with Fred while we are gone. Lucky team….Judy Farnam is bringing her catering magic, providing yummy and imaginative evening meals (wish I could be there and here at the same time!).
With a great send off from everyone, including a confused Sweet Pea, we were pinching ourselves as was started on the first leg, Afton VA to Indianapolis, IN. Because we wanted to see a great deal en route, we followed the suggestions of Jeep Moore and dedicated the first three days to moving out of the south. We took I 66 all the way to Charleston, West Virginia. The beauty on either side of road was amplified by the time of year. Different shades of green rose up the steep slopes of the mountains that enclose the narrow valleys typical of the state. There was a ruggedness in comparison to Virginia – warning signs about road hazards, runaway truck lanes and many, many TALL cell phone towers on the peaks of mountains.
We avoided Kentucky and headed north to The Ironworks Hotel in Indianapolis Indiana, traversing first Ohio and then Indiana. As we drove, we crossed a very wide river, which turned out to be the Ohio River, forming the boundary between the two states.
To us Ohio looked a lot like the east, with pockets of poverty, especially in rural areas, and the usual landscape. But as soon as we passed into Indiana there were more farms in the midst of rolling country, and a fair amount of heavy industry. We spent the night in a jazzy new hotel called the Ironworks, modeled on a hotel in Wisconsin that refurbished an old ironworks factory. It was in the middle of a mall, with apartments, restaurants and stores attractively connected to each other to make a crescent shape. Our room was just what we needed, two queen beds and a walk-in shower for Rosalie who has Parkinson’s. She handles her disobeying legs and arms very well and has in no way let her physical challenges cause us to miss anything; she just moves a little slower, which we have the time to do.
We were able to have dinner in a sushi restaurant two doors down from our hotel, which was excellent. Wish I had taken pictures of one of the fried ice cream desserts! I left my cotton jacket in the seat next to me; the hotel found it for us and sent it by mail to Eliza in Salt Lake City.