Spring Fling 2011 - Days 1 & 2

The first day was mostly good.  The early morning routine, rise, mall-walk, coffee & newspaper, and breakfast was quite normal, the morning weather was decent and the final stages of preparing to leave the house for a while went smoothly (and 95% correctly!)  Mid-morning sunshine suggested taking the riverside "scenic route" & accelerated the time of departure.  However, a late weather alert warned of floods bringing the realization that the Ohio River may well be in flood & closing sections of the river road, plus the clouds moved in completely obliterating any further sunshine.  Pulling out of the driveway with the odometer at zero the decision was made to simply go for the speedy route.

First stop was The Brick in Jonesville for their excellent bean soup and even better (if messy) hamburger deluxe.  Thereafter it was just a speedy dash all the way to Marissa's in Mount Vernon.  There was a great deal of water everywhere & all rivers and creeks were very high.  The drive was 217 miles.

Zoe was my welcoming hostess and seemed to be very pleased to see me.  I settled in and waited to see Marissa who could only stay a little while as she had three meetings back-to-back taking much of the late afternoon and evening, justifying my arrival today to "dog-sit".

After she had left I went to set up my laptop and ran into the first trip crisis which quite spoiled my evening.  Briefly distracted while packing away the laptop in Columbus I had forgotten to pack the computer battery charger!  Wild ideas of a round trip to get it, or a return home for a night between here & heading south did not appeal.  However, knowing Marissa wanted to install a new router & test it I chose to save what battery capacity I had.  After Marissa returned & we discussed it after making our plans we decided to see if I couldn't obtain a generic replacement in Evansville.

Saturday's morning weather was iffy at best, but all forecasts indicated that it would deteriorate later and be really nasty for the next 72 hours.  We made a decently early start towards Evansville, grabbed some breakfast when we got there and started shopping.  In Michael's Marissa bought my choice of a tapestry that will eventually grace my house, in the going-out-of-business Border's I bought a number of CD's for my listening pleasure while driving south and back while she bought a DVD or three, and then in Best Buy we got her router and my universal PC charger.

We then moved on to the zoo, virtually deserted on a cool, wet school day.  We made a pass through their fully enclosed and warm Amazonia and enjoyed all the orchids that had been temporarily integrated therein.  We then proceeded to give ourselves a good work-out by walking the entire zoo, which while not large as zoo's go is built in a very hilly area. As the old joke goes, it felt like it was "uphill, both ways"!  Out timing was good as for 98% of our walking it was merely damp & we were close enough to dive back into Amazonia while a short, sharp shower inundated the area.  After it stopped we made our way out, headed back through Evansville, stopped for a fast-food lunch and then a quick shop for food supplies (mostly for breakfasts) and then back home, through the now-steady rain, swinging down by the waterfront to see that the Ohio River is already well above flood stage.

The router is set up and works, the laptop is on charge/mains power, and after a successful day we settled down to watch some of the episodes of our last set of DVD's of NCIS, the 7th season.

A few pictures have been posted on Flickr & may be seen here.