day 57, Thursday, October 10, 12,827 miles (16,427 with part 1), Lieber State Park, Indiana

My idea to overnight in those cozy KOA cabins near the highways paid off again today as i get an early start on the road for the second day. We made good time on the road because the road is less interesting than everything we saw before. my plan was to do about 500 miles and then stay in the KOA beyond Indianapolis where we stayed on 9/11/01. when i realized at 5:00 p.m that we could make it, I called to reserve a cabin. Just as i asked the clerk who answered the phone if there were cabins available (there were), some unthinking person approached Leben and Erde who were a few feet away from me and they started to bark, as they are wont to do. The clerked herself then barked, Are those your dogs barking? I admitted they were and then she shouted, No dogs allowed in the cabins. Surprised at that since i stayed there with them in 2011 and only once before did i encounter that problem at a KOA, I asked the clerk to please make an exception. i did not bring along my camp guide book for this last leg of our journey since i intended to camp out in those KOA cabins to save time and so I had no idea where to go Sorry, no exceptions, she said.

knowing from the tone of her voice that i was not going to get anywhere with this person, i decided to see how rigid this person was, so i played some cards, not really concerned about whether i got a cabin from her at all. Look, I said, surely you can make an exception in my case because my one dog is paralyzed. No, no exceptions. I needed to use some other cards.

Look, I said, it us getting dark and I am tired after a long day's drive (I lied, I was not) and my car was smashed into the other day and the headlight is not working properly, which is true. No exceptions, she said.

OK, i said, I'll get the cabin for myself and leave the dogs in the car. Of course, i had no intention of doing that.

No, you can't do that, she said.

Can i tent there with the dogs, i asked. She said, You can tent here with the dogs and that's it.

Wanting to see the depths of this woman's inability to reason I asked, How about my getting
a tent site and a cabin, and I'll store my things in the cabin?

You can't do that either, she said.

I asked her to please call someone to get me an exception and she refused.

I then told her where I was and asked her for suggestions since i had no information on other camp sites and she gave me the number for another "nearby" KOA.

As it turns out, an hour later, after dark, when i got to the turnoff in the dark for that other KOA, it was not there. She had given me a camp 45 mikes to the north on I-74 when I was on I-70.

I then pulled into a gas station to ask about other nearby camps and the locals there were extremely helpful in directing me to the Lieber State Park just 4 miles up the nearby winding, dark, deer-populated back road. One young man named Taylor even told me to follow him and he would show me the way, which I did. As it turns out, we are now tenting in this splendid little park surrounded by a circle of tall trees with the open, clear sky lighted by the numerous stars and half moon, a far better deal than what we would have had in that stuffy cabin.

if any one of the three competent and equally delightful young women running Pruden Lake camp were at that KOA, we would all be settled in one of those cabins now. There are two kinds of people in life, those who can think and those who cannot. The Indianapolis KOA is staffed by the latter. And thank goodness it is because i am enjoying this new camp enormously.

What i am learning is that the KOAs are not whst they used to be.  you can find excellent ones like the Goodland Kansas KOA, but  you can no longer count on that for all of them, eg the Indianapolis KOA and the Minneapolis East KOA, and  it is more than being prt-friendly,  It is about helping people wuth their travel problems.  The clerk at Indianapolis is probsbly a descendant from that inkeeper in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

tomorrow, eastward some more, but only after a ritual i must go through when i am in this area.

Photos include...
- Leben and Erde relaxing at last night's KO cabin
- our visit to the St Louis arch, at 70 miles an hour.
- Leben and Erde at a rest area finally obeying the rules