Indiana - Day 24 - Berne and Ft. Wayne

Bluffton/South Ft. Wayne KOA
Monday, 24 June 2019

today's route

The drive north
I drove through the small town of Richmond - A Great All-American City, they say.

North of Lynn I came across another wind farm, with windmills spread out in many many of the farm fields in the area.

Passing through Randolph County, I saw an impressive building, labeled as the Randolph Co. Infirmary.  Of course I had to look it up.  Though there were previous incarnations of the Randolph County Poorhouse/Asylum/Infirmary, this particular building - the last - was built in 1899, and it was still being used until the poorhouse closed in 2008.

Randolph County Infirmary

The facility was originally opened in 1851 to house the mentally and physically disabled, single mothers, the elderly and orphans.  What you might call a mixed bag.  This official website is a little staccato and has some unintentionally funny parts, but it was more interesting than I expected.   www.hauntedrandolphcounty.com/history

North of Randolph I found another large wind farm.  I wonder how much of the electricity these farms generate is used in-state and how much is exported to other states.

Appearances can be deceiving: I passed through Portland and wondered what its economic base is, because it seems to be a prosperous small town with a past.  When I looked it up I learned its unemployment rate is slightly below the national average, but both its present and projected job growth are also below the national average, and every measure of income is substantially below the national average (e.g. average household income is $35,919 in Portland, $57,652 nationally).  It sounds like they have challenges ahead.

The price of gasoline I've seen over the last few days is usually in the $2.80/gal. range, but in Portland it's around $2.41, and a Circle K had it down to $2.35.  I would have thought it'd be lower in the larger cities and higher in the small rural areas, but apparently not.

We passed the town of Geneva, where there's a Red Gold tomato plant (they're hiring).  You know the logo.

Geneva calls itself the Land of the Limberlost, which is incomprehensible to a visitor like me but apparently refers to the nearby Limberlost State Historic Site.

Limberlost was once 13,000 acres of swamp and wetlands, a significant habitat for migrating birds and insects as well as multiple species of local plants and animals.  But from 1888 until 1910 a steam-powered dredge worked to drain the area, and for the next 80 years it was used as farmland.  In 1991, some of the locals started restoring the wetlands, and about 1,500 acres have been regained so far.

I'm seeing horse poop all along the road, which tells me I'm back in Amish country.  We passed a young colt with its mom in a pen near a house.  Farther down the road, Dexter pointed out another colt-and-mom pair in a field.  They're so cute.

Berne

the clock tower

As exhibit A for not taking an interstate, I offer the town of Berne, Indiana.  Berne (pronounced "burn") was founded by Menonites fleeing persecution in Switzerland.  The town centers around a block-sized park called Muensterberg Plaza, the main feature of which is its clock tower.  It was that tower that nearly brought me to a screeching halt and I real quick turned onto a side road to find a parking place.

close-up of clock

close-up of bell above clock

settlers monument

inscription re: settlers

info re: canton tree

Canton Tree

Across the street from the plaza is Berne's First Mennonite Church, in a much more magnificent building than I would ever have connected with Mennonites.

I learned the pronunciation of Berne and other information from a nice woman who was sitting in the plaza with some friends, minding her own business until I accosted her.  She told me that Berne is "very Swiss, very very Swiss."  I'm not quite sure what that means, but she sure is.  And her friends very kindly patted my dogs while we talked.

I'm so glad I took this route to Ft. Wayne.


Ft. Wayne
This town sits where St. Mary's River and St. Joseph River meet to form the Maumee River, which eventually runs through Toledo and dumps into Lake Erie.  That's a lot of rivers and, in 1913, the town nearly got flooded out.  With the kind of rain they've been having this year, and as full as the rivers are that I've seen, I'm wondering if they're at risk again.

Given the location, it's not a surprise that centuries ago, this was the site of the capital of the Miami Nation.  In 1680 a trading post was established here.  In 1794, after the area was traded back and forth between the French, the British, the Natives, and the Americans, the Americans finally grabbed it and built a fort (I think the 4th fort on this site) and named it after Gen. (Mad Anthony) Wayne, who had most recently made a grab for the land.  The town itself was platted in 1824.

It seems to be a mix of old and new.

Firefighters Museum

Grand Wayne (convention) Center

I saw a 3-story Queen Anne style house that was painted entirely purple.  I passed
an old house that had carving all around it with rounded lines that accidentally looked like it spelled MOM over and over.  Something like this:   MOMOMOMO

Ft. Wayne is the home of the world baseball academy.

Gas here is higher than in the rural areas, though still lower than in the Ohio R. Valley: $2.59/gallon.

I was waiting to turn right when I realized what was going by was a funeral procession.  There were no police escorts and none of the other traffic seemed to notice.  So different than funeral processions I'm used to in the South.

We stopped at a PetsMart (I was out of poop bags!).  We stopped at a Chase Bank (I was out of gasoline money!).  And we stopped at a Kroger, where one of the main things I bought was a death-to-ants product.  I looked at the sprays, but the cans told me to hold the spray 12" away from the target, which is only 5" above the table, and they told me it might stain the surface, which I hated to do just for ants.

I ended up with something called Raid Max traps, that seemed like a commercial equivalent of the borax-and-powdered-sugar thing I found on the internet - where you set out little containers that the ants would come and eat from and take the poison back to the nest to (eventually) kill everybody.  We'll see.  I'm tired of those little things that I didn't invite in in the first place.

Somewhere in all these stops I took the dogs out for a walk, and I guess the stop was long enough for Lily to make herself comfortable.  I don't remember any of my other cats sleeping all stretched out like this.

South to Bluffton
Between Ft. Wayne and Bluffton (about 20 miles), I passed a plant labeled Mitsubishi Chemicals, Advance Materials; and a General Mills plant; and Walmart Plant #7390; and some others I couldn't tell the names for.  The economy must be healthy around there.

As I drove into the KOA, I passed the dog park and saw a black squirrel chasing birds around the pen.  A Red-headed Woodpecker flew right in front of the RV.  And those were the only really positive things about this campground.  Usually KOA staff go out of their way to be friendly and accommodating, but I guess these folks didn't get the memo, or were having a bad day, or something because they could hardly have been more perfunctory about taking my money.  Oh well.  It looks like a nice campground.