Indiana is the state where my parents first met when my mom was a senior at Grace College and my dad was studying at the seminary. My mom got her master's degree from Indiana University. My eight cousins on my mom's side all attended college in Indiana, and my aunt, uncle, and five of my cousins currently live in Indiana. I lived in Indiana during the summer of 1993 when I was working on my master's degree. Several weeks ago I contacted my cousin who lives in Indianapolis to see if we could get together on April 15. The only times I've seen her in the past 19 years have been at my mom's and my brother's funerals. I would have liked to have spent time with her and meet her two children, but it didn't end up happening.
We drove into Indiana bright and early on Friday morning. We planned to spend most of the day at Wilstem Wildlife Park. I had learned about the animal encounters available there, and the kids really wanted to do it. If it was up to me, we wouldn't have done it because of the cost, which was also true of our two days at Universal in Florida last year. Paul is far more willing to splurge than I am. Our first activity was to drive through the safari. We were each given a container to feed the animals. The emus were the most aggressive. In some sections of the safari we were told to keep our windows up because we weren't supposed to feed some of the animals. We were a little bit rushed because we hadn't arrived as early as they thought we would. I had intended to do the safari drive thru during our lunch break. We decided to wait until our lunch break to get a photo of our family with a grizzly bear. Our second activity was to spend one hour with two Asian elephants in their late 50's. We had to pay extra to feed them which I thought was ridiculous given how expensive the encounters were, but we splurged and purchased some slices of carrots and apples so we could feed the elephants.
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| Petting a bearcat (binturong) |
Our lunch break was next, so we decided to go back through the safari again as we still had a lot of animal feed, and we wanted to get a picture of our family with the grizzly bear. This proved to be a very, very expensive trip through the safari because Paul drove too fast, and a significant bump created a hole in the oil pan of our van. When we parked to get our picture with the grizzly bear, I pointed out to Paul that there was steam coming from the hood of the van. Upon inspection he discovered that the oil pan was damaged, and oil was pouring out onto the ground. My dad and Margie have paid for us to have a AAA membership for 5 years. Thankfully, we had never needed to use it prior to this. I've been paying for home insurance for 22 years and have never made one claim. Similarly, we've gone over 20 years without making a claim with our car insurance. We're also thankful we've never needed to make use of our life insurance policies. In December 2021 we switched from health insurance to Samaritan Ministries, a Christian health sharing program. So far, we haven't submitted anything to Samaritan for reimbursement because the bills have been too small and because they don't pay for mammograms. I handed Paul my phone (I wish I hadn't because I didn't get my phone back for 4.5 hours), and he began the process with AAA. We never got our picture taken with the bears because the kids and I had to walk back (where you are supposed to drive) to the kangaroo barn. We didn't see Paul for the next 4.5 hours, so he missed out on all the other animal encounters that I had purchased for each of us. Although we will be paying for the $1K oil pan and also the rental car, thanks to our AAA membership we didn't have to pay for our van to be towed to a Honda dealer in Indianapolis.
The kids and I had a private tour of a variety of animals housed in a building they call the kangaroo barn. We were able to pet a bearcat and several kangaroos. By far my favorite part of the day was our time with a sloth named Luna. She was very friendly and loved to have the "palm" of one of her feet rubbed. I doubt I'll ever hold a sloth again, so it was a very memorable experience! Luna's caretaker did an excellent job of teaching us a lot about sloths. After that, the four of us spent an hour with two giraffes. We didn't have to pay extra to feed them. Our final animal encounter was with three Asian otters. We paid extra for that encounter, and I don't feel that it was worth what we paid because we didn't get to touch or hold the otters. We watched them play with toys, swim in a baby pool, and dry off on a towel, and we fed them pieces of fish using a wooden skewer. From the time Paul called AAA it took more than 2 hours until the tow truck arrived. While we were with the otters, the tow truck arrived. I had very little communication with Paul during those 4.5 hours because he had both of our cellphones, and I also was unable to take videos of our animal encounters. We explored the kangaroo barn and also spent more time with Luna while waiting for the tow truck to pick us up.
The plan had been to have an early dinner at a Bob Evans on the way to our hotel in Indianapolis. We ended up just eating crackers and such (which we usually have for "lunch" when we're on vacation) at almost 8pm, which is MUCH later than the kids and I usually eat dinner. We spent almost 3 hours in the tow truck because he had to stop twice - once for hydraulic fluid and the second time to pick up a second vehicle. Paul and I were in the front row of the cab with the tow truck driver, and the kids were in the back row of the cab. He dropped us off at our hotel along with some of our belongings that were in our van and then took our van to a Honda dealer. Paul had been told they would complete the repair on Monday so we discussed a wide variety of options - going home on Sunday night as planned, going to Ohio as planned but then returning to Indianapolis on Sunday evening and driving home on Monday, Paul coming back with his brother, Paul flying back, etc. We made the decision to stay in Indianapolis through Monday. I booked a rental car, I was about to make a hotel reservation two more nights in Indianapolis and try to cancel the one in Ohio, and Paul was about to take the hotel's free shuttle to the airport (to get the rental car) when we found out that they wouldn't be able to replace the oil pan until Wednesday because they didn't have the part. I was grateful at that moment that I hadn't altered our hotel reservations because at that point we decided it was better to just go home on Sunday night as planned in the rental car. I wish I hadn't already made the rental car reservation because the price was much higher for the days we added to our reservation. We hadn't rented a vehicle since we were in San Diego in 2018. Paul plans to drive back to Indianapolis tomorrow to return the rental car, and the Honda dealer will pick him up at the airport and bring him to the dealership. He then plans to drive home in our van. He'll be driving 16 hours in one day. Gulp. We didn't know what size vehicle we'd be renting, and also the tow truck driver was the one getting things out of our van so there were many things left behind that we've missed the last few days such as my sneakers, Paul's hoodie, two of my jackets, our garage door opener, etc. I did some laundry yesterday, but the rest of our dirty laundry is in a bag in our van in Indianapolis at the moment. Thankfully, Nadia wears the same size shoes as me, so I've been borrowing her sneakers when I walk Milo. Part of the reason we didn't extend our time in Indianapolis was we had filed our taxes before we left for our vacation, but we hadn't sent our checks to the state of PA or the IRS, and those needed to be postmarked by today. We needed to get home in time for Paul to write the checks and get them in the mail. I had done almost all of the driving for the first week of our trip, but after we got the rental car Paul did all of the driving.
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| I remember playing that game on an Apple 2 computer many years ago! |
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