Sunday, October 14, 2018

Camping on the Erie Canal in Delphi, Indiana

As we were rolling toward our next destination, Denisa was snapping pictures through our big motor home windshield. Indiana is in the middle of corn harvest. We've noticed this interesting white line when viewing a field of corn from the side. That's when we realized that the "white line" was where the ears of corn are attached to the stalk. Being from wheat country, we didn't realize that the ears so uniformly grow at the same height on each corn stalk. We must be agricultural nerds, because we find things like that fascinating.

We are seeing the combines pulling into the fields along the highway, and trucks heading to the big grain elevators.

Even with all the space in those big elevators, they are having to pile some of that bright yellow corn on the ground already.

The soy beans aren't nearly as pretty as other crops, as they are now dried out and ready for harvest as well.

We have to make one other observation from our time on the road through Indiana. Today we are on a four-lane divided highway, but the speed limit is just 60 miles per hour. We certainly aren't in any hurry, and I guess the rest of Indiana isn't either.

We were on the road almost two hours today, before we pulled into our new home town of Delphi, Indiana. We are in one of the three campsites here at the Wabash and Erie Canal Park. Right in our back yard is a tiny sliver of the 468-mile canal.

We took a walk over the pedestrian bridge to get a better look at the Wabash and Erie Canal--the longest man-made waterway in the Western Hemisphere. Right here through Delphi, Indiana, was once the best way to move people and goods all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.

We are camping right beside the tow path where the mules walked, towing the barges up and down the canal. The Canal Park has a miniature barge on metal skids, with a rope attached to practice our towing technique. Nope, this mule couldn't budge it.

The mules' tow path is now a bike trail that we enjoyed one evening. The water in this section of the canal was an interesting turquoise color for some reason.

A red iron bridge, turquoise water, and the purple twilight sky made for a beautiful bike ride color combination.

The bridges allowed us to make a loop around the canal, so we also crossed on the blue bridge . . .

and walked across the wooden suspension bridge just for fun.


The Wabash and Erie Canal is no longer in use, and much of the hand-dug canal from the 1800's has collapsed. So part of our bike ride along the tow path was among trees that weren't there when the canal was operating.

But some of the big old trees in the forest surrounding the water have been here long enough to tell some good stories. We're wondering about the stories from this old tree that we could literally walk inside.

The water that filled the canal came from the Wabash River. Our tow path bike ride took us all the way to sunset point, that overlooks the Wabash not long before sunset.

We think we're going to like it here in Delphi, living along the Wabash and Erie Canal!

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