Joining the Moose Lodge
We have just completed out first day of our return cross-country trek. According to Roadtrippers, we went 523 miles today in a little more than eight hours. Neither Kim nor I am all that keen on slow-playing parts of the country that we have crossed a lot over our lives. The span between Ithaca and Indiana is a zone we have each crossed innumerable times, so we were inclined to just book it. Summertime is road-fixing time all across America and the roads we traveled today were no exception. The good news was that we never got stopped completely, but there were plenty of lane closures that kept our average speed down by 5-10mph. We expected to be on highways the whole way wit some toll roads along the way. Our Mercedes GPS tried to take us on local roads several times in what looked to be much longer paths. When I ignored it and went on the toll road, I didn’t run into any accidents or road closures, so I’m inclined to think my GPS is somehow restricting me from toll roads and trying to figure that out on the fly is a non-starter. I’ll figure it out in the morning before we head out.
I think we probably stopped a total of four times for rest stops and/or gas. We had enough snacks to keep us going through the day, supplementing them with a few cold drinks. This forced-march approach to the day left us scheduled to arrive at our Fremont, Indiana Holiday Inn at 4pm. We spent about an hour contemplating driving further today and getting out ahead of our schedule to give us some leeway over the next two days as we start to get into territory where we want to do some sightseeing. The problem was Chicago. It sprawls so far across our path that we would have had to drive until 8pm or just get an hour further, and paying for two hotels in the process. Neither seemed worthwhile, so we stuck to plan.
What we hadn’t planned on was that it was Sunday night in the Midwest, which meant that there weren’t many dining options available in Fremont. We actually drove through town twice and came up with a goose egg, so we went on to the hotel, figuring they would know the nearby places to eat. After all, hospitality must recognize that overnight guests usually want a spot for dinner. They provide breakfast, but strangely enough, when we asked about dinner spots it was as though no one had ever asked that question before. The only suggestion was to drive six miles into Angola, Indiana. Kim asked me what I thought people in these towns did for Sunday dinner. My comment was that they probably eat at home or went to the Moose Lodge for spaghetti and meatballs. I had grown up in Wisconsin for four years and that seemed like something I remembered going on.
As we drove around looking for a restaurant, we found ourselves driving through lots of Indiana farmland with corn and soybean fields all around us. As we approached a building with perhaps fifty cars in the parking lot, we figured we had cracked the code and found the best watering hole. As we got closer, imagine our surprise when we saw it was, indeed, the local Moose Lodge. They were doing a land office business tonight, even having a tent for dining al fresco. We looked at each other and laughed at what we thought had just been a joke, but was apparently o joke at all. We even contemplated stopping to see if they would sell us a meal and an experience. I said we might have to join the lodge. That caused us do some quick math on what a membership in the Moose Lodge (if available) would cost. Perhaps if they had a trial membership on offer….
Finally, we headed into Angola, where there was supposed to be an Applebees. Along the way, we suddenly passed a Ramada Inn that had an adjoining restaurant that, from the cars in front of it, looked to be open. We made an immediate U-turn since our experience in Fremont led us to believe that Applebees or not, the risks of coming up dry on Sunday might be high, even in Angola. And here’s the really strange thing, it was 4:30pm and the place was doing a lively business. They even had a live band playing. At 4:30pm.
When we travel to Spain and Portugal in September, I fully expect to get some flak if we try to dine earlier than 10pm. We all know that Americans eat earlier than most of the rest of the world, but that generally means something like 6pm, not 4:30pm. But then, Indiana on a Sunday may not fit any pattern of Americana that we want to advertise to Europeans.
Passing all the corn fields we did made me hanker for one of my favorite foods, corn on the cob. I was hoping to find a restaurant that served corn, even though it is still a bit early in the summer for good sweet corn. The Ramada restaurant with the live music had no corn on offer. It must have had an international cooking staff, presumably with a Southeast Asian influence, because there were mostly Thai dishes on the menu. Kim ordered a Thai chicken salad and I had Peanut Noodles, which was an awful lot like Pad Thai I’ve had. There wasn’t a kernel of corn anywhere to be found. Maybe those soybeans were actually peanut plants?
After a quick dinner, we headed back to the Holiday Inn. However inconvenient and exotic the dinner was tonight, I suspect that breakfast will be both very convenient (literally just down the hall starting at 6am) and very American. I predict scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, hash brown potatoes, toast, pancakes, waffles and lots of coffee and fruit juices. And the best part of breakfast is that we won’t have to join the local Moose Lodge to get it.