It’s All Part of the Adventure – July 20, 2015

We left Nashville just after 7 a.m. (Central Time) this morning headed to an RV park in Lakeville, Indiana which is a tiny suburb of South Bend.  It was an 8 hour trip which is a little long for me, but Jim manages all the driving very well.  We stopped at a truck stop for lunch and I went in first to get our food out of the refrigerator.  Jim was right behind me and when he got inside he said, ” oh no”.  For Mr. Understatement that means something big is wrong.  How wrong could it be?  After all, I didn’t see anything.  For those of  you who followed our 2012 trip, you may remember one episode early in the trip when I forgot to fasten the refrigerator door only to find it contents on floor when we stopped for lunch.  Well…….

Neither one of us had secured the TV and we had been on some very rough roads all day.  There was the TV, face down slightly hanging off the shelf.  We both climbed over the table to get to the TV and very tentatively raised it hoping to see no glass on the shelf.  To our amazement, everything seemed to be in one piece.  God is so good to us.  After we arrived and hooked up the TV, we were shocked to see it was working better than before.  Like all electronics and some people, sometimes a good smack in the head does more good than harm.  It all part of the adventure!

Once we were in our site and settled in, we went looking for some groceries and a restaurant.  With my current dietary restrictions eating out is a lot harder than it used to be so we drove the 10 miles to South Bend knowing there would be more options there.  We found an Applebee’s  thinking at least I could get a salad with grilled chicken on it.  They have a new dish called Cedar Grilled Lemon Chicken garnished with Granny Smith apple relish, topped with lemon olive oil vinaigette over a blend of cranberries, rice, honey-glazed pecans and quinoa.  Absolutely something I could eat.  Quinoa seems to be the new food in town.  Yesterday at Belle Meade instead of getting their pimento cheese and fried green tomato sandwich, (which I love, by the way) I ordered a red and white quinoa salad with avocado and pineapple and grilled chicken.

Salad at Belle Meade Restaurant

After we ate, we drove around a little, just in case 8 hours wasn’t enough time to spend in the truck.  Low and behold, we found ourselves at the entry gate of the University of Notre Dame.  Jim used his “nice guy from Florida” routine on this big burly guard and he let us drive on campus.  Jim took some really good pictures of the Main Building and the lake.

Everywhere we drove we were stopped by construction barriers.  I guess the University is not having any financial problems based on the amount of building going on.  Since its summer and only a few students are on campus, I wondered why all these high school age kids were there.  It took me awhile to figure out these were the college students.  I guess this is one of the signs that I really am 70 years old now.