It seemed like a good idea at the time, early Thursday morning. Both hounds like riding in the car but that doesn't mean they sit up the whole way, looking out the window and enjoying the scenery passing by. Stella always likes to go even if we are not going anywhere. She will check the back door of the Mini Countryman as she walks by it just in case that door pops open after she pushes her nose onto it. Heidi on the other hand, probably only rides because I want her to. I've always had the feeling she doesn't enjoy going in the car that much. She is experienced though, with the 3,000 mile trip in June 2015 and a short turn around trip to Arkansas in September 2013.
We hadn't left yet and I am not sure what her look means. She might be trying to comprehend the seat warmers, noted by those two small green lights in front of her nose. It didn't take long for her to lay down and go back to sleep.
The local area is a pretty neat geography lesson. As we go south to southeast it is all hills. Either a few miles west or about 20 miles southwest like we are heading, the land is flat as far as you can see. I was hoping to get some photos of that difference in the landscape as we left Thursday morning. The plan was subject to change but I had the "42 mile loop" as the main idea.
Both of those pictures don't show the steepness of the hills we were traveling on.
By this time we have traveled five to eight miles from the last picture, driven through a very small farming community and are headed west.
Those high power towers are the same line you see on our walks through the field. They will go another 75 miles to the Ohio River.
To me this is just a drastic difference in land in such a short distance. Geography experts will know the reason or could it explain it much better than I can, but I was told once it was just how the glaciers spread throughout the state of Indiana.
We are heading north on the same highway that I use to dive the Z4 on. This is the highway where the cops would have thrown away the keys if they had ever caught me. With a nice smooth highway and plenty of room to see what was ahead of you, it was very hard not to test the specs for the highest speed
This irrigation system will be busy next summer.
After we had passed through another farming town of Newberry I decided to turn off onto a country road, thinking I'd have plenty of chances to stop the car, stand outside the door and take some pretty good pictures. The times I did that up to this point, Heidi always thought we were all getting out of the car and would step over onto the driver's seat ... my seat. Stella was stretched out in back and rarely woke up from her morning nap.
Like I said when we started, plans change and sometimes they change pretty quickly. I knew by the way this road looked it was going to have to be two hands on the steering wheel even if we were going 40 mph. It looks straight there, but within a few miles it was curvy, some hairpin turns or stop signs at the bottom of a blind hill. Just like it should as we drove east ... the closer we got to 'my area' all the flat land had disappeared, replaced by short steep hills on a rough and narrow country road.
She finally sat up in her seat instead of lowering head over the floorboard, and gave me the look "I have to get outside" ... I pulled into a dirt driveway heading to a barn and let her out on my side of the car. She had to pee .... she must have been holding it since we left home because I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to stop. After I lifted her back onto my seat and she took her seat ... we were only a few miles from the highway to take us home. That tower you can see in the center of the picture is the same tower I take a picture of when we are in back of the field on our walks.
Two seconds after I turned the car off and opened my door, Heidi jumps out and sprints for the front yard. It looked like we made it home just in time.
It was still in the low 20's so she wasn't going to stay outside too long. Stella and I were already in the house waiting for her to come to the door. As far as Stella was concerned, this travel day was over. She went back to her spot in front of the island to sleep the rest of the morning away. Honestly, local drives with the hounds will be few and far between. I'll go out and take pictures but they don't have to go, since they would rather stay home and sleep. They liked being back home by the way their tails looked running in the house.
It was cold Thursday morning but by Saturday we are looking at 4"-6" of snow in this area.
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