How to wash an elephant's butt and mill corn

Where do elephants take sanctuary? Indiana.

We shoved off from Jellystone Park near Michael Jackon’s childhood home with two things top of mind:

1. We’ve no home to return to
2. We’ve no destination to head to

Describing how it feels to be floating like this is like trying to describe the love a parent feels their children. Impossible. If someone is a parent then you know they know and they know you know, but there are really no words to say. I think that’s what this floating feeling is similar to.

Prior to Chicago we had events scheduled and geographic regions to visit defined. Now all we know is that it’s getting cold here and it’s warmer elsewhere. For a while the plan was to head west to St Louis and watch Street League Skateboarding. The weather was too iffy for that so we decided to head south for blue skies and warmer temps.

We typically travel in four hour bursts and look for interesting things within a few hundred miles away. From Gary, IN to an elephant sanctuary Erin found a while back is 246 miles or 3 hours and 57 min. A no-brainer! To the elephants!

Where elephants go to retire

The ranch is set up for daily routines of washing and learning about elephants. You’re right there in the mix with the care-takers scrubbing with push brooms and spraying them down with the hose. The elephants LOVE it. It’s literally a spa experience for them as they get pampered and are the center of attention. They drink gallons of water per second from a 30 gallon bin or drink straight from the hose. We were all just blown away by the whole thing. Petting, touching and being within inches of these huge, soulful creatures while learning about their history, emotions, moods and attitudes from experts. Just an unreal experience.

Pachyderms to Pioneers

We headed back to Spring Mill State Park where we were camped and stopped by the restored and curated “Pioneer Village.” It’s a small grouping of buildings where some (including the grist mill) have been sitting where they sit for over 200 years. We were lucky and the grist mill was in operation. We got a cheeky, informative demo of the mill milling corn from a passionate pioneer role-playing volunteer named Bill. The giant stones were the original ones from the early 19th century and responsible for the milling of corn for farmers from miles around. A portion of the milled corn was used to make Old Hamer whiskey in the distillery next to the mill.

Corn milling demo over, we were now milling around on our own. We were transported. The sounds of the water wheel and and sights of the buildings were causing high definition visions for our mind’s eye of life at that time.

As we strolled up the path to the toward the distillery we kept hearing a rhythmic “tap, tap, tap” then it would stop for a little bit and restart. Now were close enough to see that the sounds was coming from something hitting the window. It was a bird! A bird was trapped inside the distillery! Lucky for this fellow, it had only been a couple of hours since our elephant encounter we were still filled with protective, conservatory zeal. Erin froze in her tracks twenty yards away while the boys and I headed for the door adjacent to the window.

Getting a good view from inside, we could now see it was bright green ruby throated hummingbird! He became frantic when he saw us and began to really go for it at the window as it was the only thing emitting light (no electricity in 1830 duh!). I had no bath towel with me like the last time I caught a trapped bird (sparrow; Hamtramck; 1999) so I went for him with the only thing on hand - my hands. I slowly approached with my arms wide to kind of corral him to a corner and gently reached in and cupped my hands around him. I took a moment to inwardly observe that within two hours I had petted a rescued elephant and was now holding a wild hummingbird.

Calmly but quickly I walked to the door, took a few steps outside, opened my hands and we all watched the little fella fly off. Whew! That was intense! Poor Erin needed a tight hug to make her feel better as her HD imagination must have veered from pioneer living to a bad place for that desperate hummingbird much too quickly.

We were pretty amped up for the rest of the walk around the village and I think it contributed to how vivid the thing is. When we were walking back to the truck a bus load of seniors were pulling (we beat the rush) and a confused woman loudly spoke her disdain of Mini’s “cropped” tail. She was born that way! Sheesh give the dog a break, she’s already self-conscious about it looking exactly like a giant, hairy thumb.

Back at the camper Elliott melted his own face off again with Da Bomb laced ramen. I’d say he was doing it for the likes, but that would mean that we had reliable cell service HAHAHAHA! :-|