Indiana: Happy, HOT Trails

June 18
Until this walk, my feet were one of my favorite body parts. I still love them, but they are now also the least attractive body parts -- Blisters and yellow toenails, ugh! I take my socks off to let them and my feet air out during my lunch break every day, but hiking six to ten hours every day means that they never really heal. I still have traces of the blisters I got that first 26-mile day. I’ll treat myself to a pedicure when I get to San Francisco.

I took the Second Street bridge from Louisville into Indiana today. There wasn’t as much bravado in this transition as with West Virginia or Kentucky -- just a little sign by the interstate markers. I want to instruct the state highway department on the importance of first impressions.

For the second day in a row, I didn’t have to carry my pack; Cindy's keeping it for me. She and I looked at my map last night and decided that there’s no way I’m going to make to Corydon today. She said she’d pick me up halfway to Lanesville. Well, I made it to Lanesville by four o’clock and discovered that the map is wrong -- Corydon is only 9 miles, not 15, farther. No use in pushing it, I told myself, and back to Cindy’s I went with 15 packless miles under my feet for the day.

June 19
So many postcards! Last night I wrote twenty postcards that I’ve promised people so far. I didn’t write to the Kentucky people -- Cindy’s sending them from Louisville and I only promised to write from further states. “Only,” hah! I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea. I’m averaging ten postcard pals per state, and I’ve got seven states to go.

Cindy’s husband Bill bought me a McDonald’s breakfast and dropped me off back in Lanesville this morning. I’m carrying my pack again and anticipated a grueling return to pack mule-dom, but was surprised by how natural it felt. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised after three months of training and a month of constant wear. I sometimes feel wobbly walking without it -- less stable. Fortunately, I don’t have far to walk today.

The morning was cool because it rained last night and, though there wasn’t much of a shoulder, most drivers moved to the center readily enough. I took my time; I found my Indiana rocks -- a pale pink rose quartz geode and a strange little black and gray disc that I’m not entirely sure is natural.

A woman with two kids in a minivan pulled over and asked for my autograph this afternoon; she said she recognized me from the CBS show.

Randy West and his intern Jennifer parked across a driveway and began snapping pictures as I approached. When I reached them, he introduced himself as my host for the night and the Editor of the Corydon Democrat. Just then a car pulled into the driveway and Randy made another introduction. The guy whose driveway it was is a teacher at Indiana University whose New Year’s resolution was to run a marathon every month for a year! Randy graciously offered to cart my pack into town for me and left us to talk shop. We stood there comparing endurance levels and body upkeep. He ticked off the list of marathons he’s done and planned so far in Monterey, Louisville, and Salt Lake City, to name three of the twelve -- Six down, six to go.

I spent the rest of the day in Corydon, “the first capital of Indiana.” I didn’t intentionally plan this trip with state capitals in mind but, having seen Charleston and Frankfort, I regret missing Indiana’s official capital. The “first” will have to do.

Randy treated me to lunch at Granny’s Cafeteria. Later, Jennifer took me over to the Amish general store for ice-cream. She and I spent a large part of the day talking girl talk -- There aren’t many young women in newsrooms or on the road.

We had dinner at an “authentic” Mexican place. For dessert, we dropped in at the Presbyterian church, which had been converted into a coffee house for the evening. Cake and coffee cost a donation; we stayed the hear some poetry and a dulcimer-player.

On the way back to the house, we stopped by the Town Square for the Friday night concert: Sousa from the gazebo orchestra with a packed lawn chair audience.

June 20
I am taking more “trails” than I’d guessed. First, I walked the Midland Trail (Route 60) and now I'm on the George Rogers Clark and Lincoln Heritage Trails (Route 62). This is a good thing; if natives and explorers used these routes, chances are good that they’re the shortest and best distance between two points.

People in southern Indiana are proud of their densely wooded land. The glaciers that flattened the northern half of the state melted here and created a rich, green, hilly countryside. Many of the towns themselves seem frozen in a better time, a time when Friday night meant a free concert from the gazebo in the town square.

Leavenworth, Indiana sits on a hill overlooking the oxbow in the Ohio River. If this trip was a search of the best scenery, I’d stop right here. From the Overlook Restaurant here, you can see for hundreds of miles over virtually uninhabited landscape. The sight of a vast stretch of the Ohio River as it bends between Kentucky and Indiana and miles of green hills was so beautiful that it surprised me into tears. I watched barges work their way down the river like slow 18-wheelers on an empty highway. It was spectacular in the truest sense of the word.

I have the most luxurious accommodations tonight at the Leavenworth Inn, a Bed & Breakfast where Randy knows the innkeeper, Amy Valentine. The Inn is a big white house with a well-manicured yard and a porch with a view of the river that’s only slightly less impressive than the view from the Overlook. There’s an extensive library, and iced tea and homemade desserts are available all day in the dining room. I arrived around 4:30, after a reasonable seventeen-mile walk, and spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting on that porch.

June 21
The best things about staying at the Inn were the view and the Amy’s cooking. It’s no surprise that she’s also the governor’s caterer. The huge breakfast banquet of french toast, biscuits, pancakes, muffins, fruit salad, and especially the bread pudding this morning were heavenly.

Amy was good to me. When I left, she gave me an Inn T-shirt and cap and a rather unusual foot aid -- “Magsteps,” magnetic insoles. They’re supposed to work wonders. We shall see.

I have a tendency to describe every meal I eat in listed detail. This is because I love food - Love it so much that even writing the word makes me happy. One of the best things about this trip is the fact that I could eat whatever I wanted to without worrying about the consequences -- usually. Ice cream, bread pudding, fried chicken, fettuccini Alfredo . . . I can eat as much as I please -- I’ll walk it off the next day!

Many women have asked me how much weight I’ve gained or lost. I lost fifteen pounds during the first two weeks of the walk. Then I gained it all back, but in a different form – Probably all muscle.

My walk today was uneventful, except in that I did 16 miles without taking a break. Heather Cassidy, a 19-year-old intern at the Perry County News, picked me up in St. Croix and gave me the grand tour of Tell City, where the paper is located. There wasn’t much to see besides the mural on the flood wall and her favorite restaurant, Casper, where we split a huge plate of breadsticks. Again, the company was the most engaging part of the visit.

Since it’s Father’s Day, the first thing I did when I got to Heather’s house was to call Dad. I gave my progress report and hearing the latest family gossip. Then I made the mistake of asking exactly what sort of medical coverage we have. I started wondering about insurance recently, whenever I stepped a little wrong and tweaked my ankle or met people with summer colds; it was one of the few things I didn't consider while planning. This immediately sent Dad into Super-Dad mode. It took ten minutes to convince him that he should not drive out to get me ... Sorry I asked ... everything is FINE. Sheesh. Parents: They do the worrying so that you don’t have to!

I ate some of the Cassidy family’s leftover BBQ for dinner. Mr. Cassidy announced that, in honor of my visit, he’d make pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. Heather and her sister cheered because he hasn’t made them in a while. Reviving old specialties is something my visits do well.

Heather is attending a junior college on a full basketball scholarship, but eventually wants to go into broadcast journalism. She described the mud volleyball ‘fest that she attended yesterday in sportscaster detail. Then, as the conversation made its way from mud wrestling to friends to boyfriends, her tone grew increasingly serious. Finally, she described how her prom date died in a car accident the day after prom.

“He was such a nice guy, didn’t even say shoot or darn,” she said, and struggled with tears.

She explained that this was the first time she could talk about it without breaking down. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this death was more of a tragedy for the people who loved the boy than for himself. Because he lived such a good life -- It seemed to me that the death of someone who wasn’t as good would be much more of a tragedy. Less perfect people who die have had no time to become better people. I’ve never thought like this before; it was a surprise.

June 22
Twenty-six miles down today. I walked a marathon in the 96-degree heat with humidity so high that my glasses fogged up for most of the morning. Not only that, but I did it without taking a break until I’d gotten to the half-way point at St. Meinrad Archabbey, a beautiful cathedral that overlooks the small town of St. Meinard, IN. I found two four-leaf clovers as I was sitting on the bench outside the abbey trying to decide if taking a tour was worth the effort. It was worth the uphill detour, but not the heart stroke that I risked getting there. I obviously still have to work on this stubbornness trait in myself.

I crossed my first time zone! I’m in Central time now. I need to remember to turn my phone on an hour earlier so that it’ll still be on ten minutes before and after nine and five o’clock Eastern Standard Time.

Tonight, I’m staying about five miles from Santa Claus, Indiana, home of the Holiday World amusement park and a cool postmark. Anne Hansen, my contact, writes for the local paper in Dale. She says things like “Oh, I just think that’s wonderful” a lot in her lilting voice.

She speaks proudly and often of her husband and their two sons, Luke and John.

The thing we discussed that interested me most, was the fact that Anne is homeschooling her kids. It’s something I’ve seen several families in these small towns doing. With the state of public education today, homeschool seems more and more like a better option than traditional public school. It seems to me that the purpose of public school nowadays is to strip kids of their creativity from day one. I can trace the decline of my creative will from my last creative writing class in junior high to the SATs in high school. College wasn’t much better. Of course, filling the mold will always be easier than breaking it, and grade school does anything but prepare you to think for yourself. Any mold-breaking I did in college, while rewarded, was strictly out of frustration.

My main concern about homeschooling is the social separation: The grade-school gauntlet can be hellacious, but it’s the best introduction to society we’ve got. Anne said that her boys are doing “just fine” I need a little more proof than that.

June 23
Eighteen miles without my pack (Anne’s husband Kim took it to Lynnville for me) turned out to be every bit as killer as yesterday’s marathon. It was so hot that I slipped several times on patches of tar that had melted on the road. To make matters worse, thinking for some reason that I’d find plenty of places to fill it, I’d only brought my pint-sized water bottle. I emptied it in no time and passed no restaurants or gas stations, only homes. Toward the end, I began going door to door. The first two houses were unoccupied. At the third, an old basset hound and several cats stood in the front yard, looking like they wanted in just as much as I did. I slumped down on a little concrete bench next to the hound, who looked up at me in mournful sympathy.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I said.

It was the first time I’ve said or felt that way.

Yeah, I was stubborn again -- walked 10 AM to 4 PM with only a half-hour break, which I took in some farmer’s half-mown hay field beside a blackberry bush that provided my midday snack. I searched for a shady spot but no shade was cool enough. When I finally stumbled into the Lynnville library to called Anne, she told me that my contact for the night was one mile east of town -- I’d passed it already.

I am staying with the Bunner family tonight. Carol and Ray invited Carla and Tia, two of their three daughters for dinner so they could meet me -- The third lives in Texas. Carol laid out a huge spread to ensure that everybody got their favorite food. After dinner, Fay brought out the heat massage/foot spa for me. It felt heavenly; I told him that my feet probably wouldn’t go anywhere tomorrow if I couldn't promise them a spa there, too.

The evening’s entertainment was a couch burning. Tia and her husband Jim just bought a new living room set so they could get rid of the old one that the family had been passing around for decades. As we watched it burn in the back yard, Carol said she couldn’t believe Ray had actually burned it. Carla said “I don’t know why not. He burned the last one.”

June 24
The heat continues. In the local paper's weather section for today through Thursday is the word HOT, with flames sizzling up from it. With the humidity, it’s supposed to get up to 110 this week.

Today I was smarter, though. I walked from eight to eleven o’ clock and am spending the afternoon at the Classic Corner gas station. The owner, Big Mike, called NBC and they came out and did an interview for tonight’s news. Mike also called Rocky’s Shoes and Boots and persuaded them to give me a free pair of boots! Meanwhile, I'm playing Uno with his daughter Brandy -- She won by handicap the first game, fair-and-square the second.

I must do this more often: Tonight, I am staying with James and Laurie Newcomb, a couple of education majors (he’s Physical, she’s Music) who are my age. They put me up in a room decorated with Precious Moments figurines and Beanie Babies and a bookcase full of Dr. Seuss and Sesame Street.

“It’s the little girl’s room, for when we have a little girl,” they said.

I thought I might feel a little weirded out being so close to my potential future: “Weird,” the way you feel when close friends start getting married. I feel right at home, though, albeit a little coddled. Maybe to them, I was a good luck charm. If I’d thought to make a first-night wish, I would’ve wished them a daughter of their dreams.

June 25
Because of my NBC-14 appearance last night, I didn’t walk more than an hour at a time today without someone stopping to wish me luck or ask “WHY are you doing this?”

I didn’t mind at all. The only times I did mind were when people kept me. I ended up standing by the side of the road for too many painful minutes. Strangers couldn't stop themselves from expressing their amazement.

I made my long stop in Poseyville at the T-Mart convenience store and gas station. Tanya Rutledge's husband works there in the garage. She took me back to her air-conditioned office where I spent two pleasant hours talking with her 10-year-old son, Justin, and with her as she rocked her baby girl.

On my way back to town, a train of kids on bikes paraded up to me for an autograph: “Niki Krause VA...CA.” I was as impressed with their patient and considerate lineup as they were with me. The oldest girl, about 15 with cornflower-sunburst eyes, asked me “What’s your town like, Niki?”

I grew up in Fairfax, VA, a suburb of Washington, D.C. “Well,” I said, “it’s bigger; there are more fast-food places, more traffic, and more people.”

I’ve decided that when school starts again, I’d like to take my rest stops at elementary schools. I never tire of answering even the Who, What, Where type of questions when the questioner is as interested as kids are.

The last leg (ha, ha) of my walk to New Harmony was the best. Part of the road was closed to through traffic because of a bridge that’s been out since December -- Out to cars, that is. I walked the whole nine miles on the double yellow line and shimmied right on through the “Road Closed” signs whistling “Ain’t Nothin Gonna Breaka My Stride” all the way. Freedom from car traffic is true freedom indeed.

I got to the New Harmony Inn at 7:30. They have a whirlpool that closes at 8:00, so I rushed over to take advantage of that. I took a dip in the indoor pool too before letting the press know that I’d arrived. Jim Kohlmeyer, the Posey County News Editor and the man I have to thank for my room, met me in the lobby where the enthusiastic concierge was introducing me to every new guest. Tammy, the front desk lady, bought me a big yummy salad for dinner and is running around filling my water glass as if I’m the queen or something. She doesn’t know that just being able to sit and visit with her is all I really need.