October 7, 2008The last stop on my whirlwind midwest trip would be Indiana which I was pre-empted by rain the previous week. Indiana was always a state I went through a small piece of when traveling I-80 between Chicago and Ohio. In recent years I had become more familiar with it as my friend Roger took me to Purdue University alumni weekends. Visiting West Lafayette I got an entirely different picture than my previous visits. My impression was that it stood for everything honest and decent about America. If I thought about the heartland, it was the people of Indiana. I had actually painted in Indiana during one of those Purdue weekends but it was not one of my better moments so I felt I needed to return.
From I-80, I headed down route 15, then 13 and immediately began to see Amish buggies and beautiful paintable farmland. As often happens, my ability to jump out and paint just anywhere was limited by narrow back roads with no parking shoulder. I could tell my time was limited before the rainstorm that was predicted moved in so I quickly found my last barn of the trip and did another little 6 x 8 just as the winds started to whip up. As my flu fatigue finally caught up with me at the end of the day, I drove through the rain to I 70 just east of Indianapolis to find a hotel within striking distance of the airport. I was thoroughly glad to be headed home for a rest before my final group of states in the east.
