August 24 2024. Dream Acres Campground to Iroquois, Indiana

    Today we are again riding through soybean and corn fields, which we will continue to see for the rest of our ride. Most of today’s route traced the same roads as 2 years ago, just in the opposite direction, so we saw some sights we recognized. 
.              Patriotic Hay Bales
        When we came to the village of Brook, we stopped at a tiny farm store on the east end of town and bought some peaches--mm, mm, good! Then we stopped at the library and worked on our plan for the next few days and filled up water bottles and found another very friendly librarian. 
   We are staying in Iroquois, a small village that no longer has a church, doesn't have a grocery store. It does have a bank. And a combo diner/bar. And a park. And a "calaboose." And a spot to house long-distance bicyclists at no charge!
    It was the middle of the day when we went through Iroquois 2 years ago, so we didn't stay in the town then. But we did stop in the park for a break and looked at the old Calaboose, a small jail the town had built in 1881, because a second saloon was coming to town and the town fathers figured a "cooler" was needed for potentially rowdy people coming into town and disturbing the peace.
    When we called up ahead of time to see if we could stay in town, Joe, the contact person, told us there was a festival going on in the park. Picturing the community building in the park that we had stayed at in Monroeville, we thought that the space where we would be staying might need to be used by the festival. So we asked if it would be a problem for us to stay there with the festival going on, but no, it wouldn't interfere.
    When we got there, Joe let us into our digs, the village hall/maintenance building in the park. It stores lawn and maintenance equipment in most of the building, but also has a bathroom with a shower and an air-conditioned village hall office that is maybe 15 by about 25 feet long where Joe had put out 2 cots for us to use. The cots had loud squeaks when sitting on or getting off them, but luckily they were quiet when lying on them. So our bikes got to hang out with the lawnmower and the tractor while we slept. The only payment asked is to leave a note telling about yourself and your trip. On a table in the office were binders of other people's notes and even a small book a bicyclist had written about his travels which included a mention of Iroquois and how wonderful it was that the village would house him. 
        The festival was the yearly Fried Green Tomatoes Festival with live music going on in the pavilion, people displaying their old cars, vendors' booths selling various items such as jewelry, knick-knacks and t-shirts, a food vendor or two, and the village booths which sold festival t-shirts and plates of fried green tomatoes. So we got to hear some country music and had pulled pork sandwiches and a bunch of fried green tomatoes which were delicious.  
            The Namesake of the Festival
 Thankfully the music quieted down as we were settling in for the night and we appreciated the air-conditioning--the weather has been heating up again.   


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