Thursday, Indianapolis

Time to do laundry!  I did laundry at Annina's home and at Rachel's home, so we only had two loads to do by the time we arrived, and this was the day to re-pack the laundry system for the next leg of the trip.  My plan was to do laundry and re-pack when we spent two nights at the same hotel.

First we went to Conner Prairie, a living history park where we saw people dressed in period costumes and doing the work of people in the mid-1800s.  Lukas threw a tomahawk and actually made it stick in a tree stump!  Natalie enjoyed petting the animals and holding a two-day old chick and Konrad ground corn into corn meal.  Dominik saw the world from a Baby-Bjorn (mostly sleeping) and we all enjoyed imagining ourselves working and living in a more simple time.  The thing I would most miss (since I've already experienced it) is air conditioning!  I would enjoy the cooking and sewing and harvesting, but the hot muggy weather is not something I'm used to.  I've lived several years of my life in this climate (including a year in Indiana) so I know it well, but I definitely prefer a drier climate.

For the afternoon, we visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  What a thrill for Tom!  Of course, he had talked it up with the boys, so when we arrived at the ticket counter, Konrad told the lady selling tickets "I want to see the cars!"  We saw a lot of old race cars in the museum, spent way too much on t-shirts, then took a bus tour on the actual racetrack.  Afterward, we were so hot we HAD to get ice cream, but the ice cream shop at the entrance to the museum was closed, so we drove around trying to find an ice cream shop.  There were plenty of vendors in anticipations of the crowds arriving the next day for time trials for the Brickyard 400, but none we could find sold ice cream.  We ended up driving downtown and finding a great ice cream shop next to a war memorial in the city circle.  Since we gorged ourselves on ice cream, we had a small dinner at White Castle's: only two sliders per person was more than enough!  Of course, we had to hit the swimming pool before bedtime.