Road Trip

If it's August, it must be time for a ROAAADDDD TRRIIPPPP.  I know.  I made that sound really fun, right?  Like Animal House fun right? Like y'all just WISH you got to go along with me, right?  WEEELLLL...let me disabuse you of that notion.

The goal of my road trip was to take the boy to Indiana for a tour of my Alma mater, Purdue.  He was scheduled for a tour on Thursday morning and from there we were headed to Peru...Circus City of the world (Barnum-Bailey used to winter there) to spend the remainder of the weekend with my cousins, who I see only every few years when I make this road trip.

When we arrived at Purdue on Wednesday night (after a 9 hour drive with 4 children either looking at or touching each other...quite a feat given they had an entire SUBURBAN to spread out...but I digress), I had ZERO recollection of the campus, even though I DO have a Purdue University Bachelor of Science (Mathematics) diploma with MY name on it.  Apparently 25 years makes a WORLD of difference.  Well, that, and the fact that I never lived in the dorms as a student and our entrance to the campus was through student housing.  It never occurred to me to wander through that part of the campus. I might have to learn it if this is where he ends up.

The tour was Thursday morning and we left the hotel with plenty of time to spare.  Which was a good thing because I had our tour time off by an hour.  So in reality, we were right on time.  I learned more about Purdue as a school than I ever knew as a student.  Apparently, you have to be pretty smart to go there.  Who knew?

We then did a bus tour that I think would have been better as a walking tour but it IS a huge campus.  We finished the tour and walked through the Engineering Mall, the area the boy will probably be spending most of his time (as an engineering major).  Armstrong Hall...the new aerospace building was awesome.  I got this pic of the boy with Neil Armstrong:

We headed to Peru after verifying Harry's Chocolate Shoppe (a misnomer as it is a B.A.R.) and Triple XXX were still present and accounted for:

and having a fine mid day repast at Five Guys.  Yum.  Along the way we stopped in Logansport, where my grandma used to live.  Down the alley from her house is the Sycamore Drive In Frozen Custard stand so OF COURSE we had to partake:

I also drove by what was my grandma's house, then a radio station, now a realtor office:

Not much had changed except the entrance to the back porch was new.


In Peru, we did what we typically do when visiting my cousins:  We eat.  We drink (a lot).  We swim.  Not to be missed is the Indiana pork tenderloin

The reason you see two pieces is that the tenderloin is SO big (how big is it?).  It is SO big that when it arrives it completely covers BOTH buns.  Thus the need to cut in half and double decker it.  And yes, I ate the whole thing.  No where else but Indiana baby!

Then there is the swimming part.  Now this is kinda funny.  You know how things sometimes go full circle?  Well, here is my cuz and middle daughter in 2003:

And here is my youngest daughter with my cuz's daughter:

What goes around, does indeed, come around.

The only low point (well, aside from the 9 hours there and the 9 hours home) was when my son decided Saturday evening that he was going with a neighbor and her friends to the Indiana State fair...with the hopes of MAYBE getting into see Sugarland.  As they were getting ready to go, bad weather was headed our way.  Since it was close to 7pm before they were able to leave, it was an hour and 30 minute trip there and one friend had to be home early, they decided not to go...just as the stage at the fairgrounds collapsed.  Our prayers are with those families who lost loved ones.


So...the weekend was a success.  I made it there and back without the use of duct tape (barely).  My son was introduced to one of the finest institutions of higher learning available to him.  We got to eat BOTH frozen custard and pork tenderloins.  And last but not least, we got to visit with my favorite people in the world.


I'd call it a Win-Win situation.