Out and around the Residence Inn - Carmel

We have been staying in mostly, ensuring that Carl remains COVID free before his surgery.

On Thursday evening, we took a short walk around the parking lot (it was colder than we anticipated so we didn't walk far...):

Contrails made the evening sky pretty -- the building to the left, which is across the highway, is IU Health North Hospital, where Carl will have his surgery on Monday.

We had noticed these bikes in the parking lot so took a look to see what the deal was with them.

I guess they are rental bikes, but they aren't getting much use at this time of the year.

Another view of the sunset -- the Residence Inn is on the right, Springhill Suites is on the left, with a shared parking lot between.

On Saturday, it was a little warmer, and we went out a little earlier, so could take a little longer walk.

The Residence Inn has a small BBQ area and courtyard which, I think, in non-COVID times, might be used for evening get-togethers (when the weather is nice).

The hotel also has an indoor pool (but no hot tub)...

... and an exercise room.

We walked around behind the Residence Inn -- our room is on the back side of the building, on the parking lot of the building behind which is a medical building of some kind. There is a small lake between the buildings and the freeway, and there were a couple of ducks on it. The building in this picture is the IU Health North Hospital again.

I was specifically wanting to get a picture of the sign indicating that there was a traffic circle coming up on the road that the Residence Inn is on...

There are a LOT of traffic circles in Carmel. Whoever was the guy who got commissions for selling  them traffic circles is off in the islands somewhere retired on the profit he made on selling traffic circles here. We thought that it might just be our unfamiliarity with traffic circles that made it seem like they have a lot of them, but... we looked up information about the city today and found this on Wikipedia:

Though Carmel was home to one of the first electronic automated traffic signals in the state, the city has constructed some 128 roundabouts since 1998, earning its moniker as the "Roundabout Capital of the U.S."  ^{wikipedia: Carmel}

Today, Sunday, we were on our way to Lou Malnati's for a salad -- the restaurant is about a mile away, and we drove through 4+ traffic circles / roundabouts (8 round trip) -- the "+" is because one of them is a double circle on both sides of the entry/exits to the freeway:

Approaching the one at the freeway -- you may be able to discern that the car in front of us was in the rightmost lane (which has to enter the freeway) and decided at the last minute to change lanes to go through the circle.

At this one, in addition to the right turn lane, there are two lanes around the circle -- this is the case for most of the circles -- two lanes.

In the part under the freeway -- it is like a figure 8 except you can't drive through the middle of the 8 -- Maybe I should say it is like an elongated traffic circle with bulbous ends at each end.

For this next one, we wanted to turn left, so needed to be in the left lane entering the circle.

The last circle on the way in to the shopping center where the restaurant was located.

We safely made it to Lou's and back, traversing the multiple traffic circles, and thoroughly enjoyed our salad for lunch!

Carmel is an interesting town -- it looks like it has recently grown up -- we drove through an area that was made to look like an old downtown storefront area but they were obviously new buildings. I'm sure there was something here "before" but most of it is probably built in the last 40-50 years.

An update for Thursday

We've spent a quiet day mostly at the hotel for Thursday. Carl is not supposed to interact with anyone from the time of his COVID test (yesterday) until his surgery on Monday. So, he ordered a pizza from Giordano's and we drove there together and I went in to get it so we could bring it back to eat. He has also been doing some paperwork and had a document that I needed to sign before a notary, so I did that at the bank while we were out too. 

I have started on our taxes... this is our first year to do a joint return with each other... while we have both used TurboTax in the past, the program only allows us to import one return from last year as the starting point for this year -- I imported the information from Dwayne's and my return from 2019 and will have to enter all of Carl's from scratch. Hopefully we'll find that we brought all the pertinent paperwork or can find it all online. At least I can get a good start on it even if I cannot get it completed.

Carl also got a call from the pre-admissions department of the hospital, and they confirmed that his COVID test came back negative, so his surgery is a "go" for Monday. The surgery is scheduled for 1pm, with check in at 11am. I can be with him before surgery and he thinks that the pre-admission person indicated there is a place in the hospital for me to wait where the doctor can find me and update me after Carl's surgery, and then I can be with him in his hospital room until 11pm. Our understanding is that Carl will be discharged on Tuesday, and, if everything is going well, we could be cleared to leave as early as Wednesday. We are thinking that Thursday would be the earliest that we would leave here. We are both a bit anxious about this whole process... so we continue to covet your prayers!

A walk and a new toy

We went to IU Health North Hospital this morning so Carl could get his COVID screening test done. We were a little confused because they had drive-in COVID screening by appointment only (in addition to an area where they were giving COVID vaccines) -- we went to the "by appointment only" area and called the number indicated there to see if we were in the correct place for "pre-surgery" screening, and found that we were not. Carl went in to the hospital to the lab area -- the lady doing the test there told him that the test was annoying but "not a big deal", but then told him to sit on his hands to keep himself from smacking her as she "tickled his brain" via his nose -- sounds a bit more than "annoying"! We will only be told if the test is positive, and would be told tomorrow; if we don't hear anything, everything should be fine and the surgery will go on as planned on Monday.

We decided to head out to enjoy a bit of the afternoon -- today is predicted to have the highest temperature for the 10 days we are scheduled to be here. Carl had found some trails nearby at Cool Creek Park so we drove over there.

We headed out on the Beech Trail...

Cool Creek was along beside us the whole time.

It was a very pretty creek!

There were id markers on some of the trees... Carl's address used to be in "Box Elder, SD" (it is one of the several mail services available to RVers).

I didn't know that Sycamores had hollow trunks nor that they were good for cutting boards!

... and I didn't know that the light wood of the Buckeye was used to make artificial limbs.

Another view of the creek

The path was very nice -- graveled in some places... in a lot of places where there was not gravel it was a bit muddy -- I guess the weather is only recently thawing here.

We saw a large bird fly across the trail and then, when it landed, realized it was a large woodpecker.

close up

Quite the handsome bird

There were two on this piece of wood...

Close-up - one on each side.

We were walking up to a nature center -- we weren't sure it was open -- this is a view back down toward the creek from the top of the hill.

From inside the nature center (it *was* open), there was a bird feeder, and under the bird feeder a very rotund squirrel (on the left) and a very rotund chipmunk (on the right side of the post).

There was an information poster on Woodpeckers -- specifically the Pileated Woodpecker that we saw.

After we finished on the trail and in the nature center, we headed to a currently not-in-use field for Carl to try out his new toy...

The above shows his first take-off -- pretty good!

It wasn't *totally* in control...

The guy who was throwing a ball for his dog seemed to be clapping for us at times!

Carl actually was *very* good at controlling his new drone. He is hoping to be able to use it to get pictures and/or videos from above in some of the places we go... though we weren't able to get pictures with it today because we need to get a memory card for the drone.

The drone in the air, "looking" at us.

I think there will be a bit more practice with Carl's new toy, and hopefully you'll see some of the fruits of its labor soon!

Oklahoma to Cuba (Missouri) and onwards to Carmel

Yesterday's post we had gotten into Oklahoma on our journey west. We made it to Cuba, Missouri for Monday night.

Right outside our hotel room in Cuba was an interesting statue. We did not go closer to examine it, but found this information on the web: https://www.osagetraillegacy.com/

We stayed at the very plush (well, maybe not) Super 8 in Cuba.

Our room was right in front of the the handicapped space, so we couldn't park in front of our room, but we put the car there temporarily when we were unloading and loading (have I mentioned that traveling with a cat means that a LOT of stuff goes in and out of each hotel room?)

Miss Kitty reported on all the smells in each of the rooms. I think she mentioned that some of the dogs who had been in the room in Amarillo may have visited the room in Cuba as well...

The Super 8 had their free breakfast available (unlike the La Quinta in Amarillo -- though the La Quinta gave us breakfast to-go bags with water, juice, and snack bars -- better than nothing!).

As we were leaving, we saw a couple of these large carriers of windmill bases go by the hotel. We had heard the sound of tractor-trailers all night long, I guess stopping and starting at this light which was just outside our room. We were able to turn on the fan of the air conditioning / heating system and keep it running all night which gave a nice steady drone that pretty much drowned out the truck noises...

Carl was trying to get a picture of the St Louis arch as we drove through... attempt #1...

attempt #2...

... attempt #3....

... and attempt #4.

He was telling me about he and Sue visiting the arch with some of their children in past years. I've never been up in the arch -- maybe something to do on a future trip!

The railroad bridge across the Mississippi in St Louis. We probably crossed that bridge back last March when we took Amtrak from Richmond to Dallas (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/03/last-leg-of-our-trip-chicago-to-dallas.html). Wow - it is amazing to realize that was almost a year ago now!

Finally we entered Indiana this afternoon...

... and got to our hotel in Carmel by mid afternoon. We've gotten all moved in, and Miss Kitty is quite settled. We figure that our hotel room here at the Residence Inn is 2-3 times the size of our motorhome living space... not counting the space on the roof of Gracie where we've spent so much time over the last few days!

Carl will have a COVID test at the hospital tomorrow, and, if that comes back clear, his surgery is scheduled for Monday, 3/8. Once he has the COVID test, he is supposed to remain isolated, but we are thinking that we may be able to go on some hikes or at least get out and walk. We are *very* glad to have the drive up here completed -- it seemed longer than we were anticipating. Our hotel is just across a freeway from the hospital, though we have to drive about a mile to get there via a street that crosses the highway. Again, we thank you for your prayers -- our journey was safe and uneventful, and we pray the same for Carl's COVID test and surgery.

On our way to Indiana

We left Mesa at about 9am on Sunday morning, heading up through the mountains north and east of Phoenix to intersect with I-40 at Holbrook, AZ. The road was pretty curvy and through beautiful scenery.

We got into New Mexico and planned to stop at the first rest area, thinking that there would be a welcome center... well... the welcome center was closed and we got to thinking about our trip across from Texas to Arizona a couple of months ago and that we knew that New Mexico had some of the strictest restrictions associated with COVID. We had decided on that trip in December that we would try to avoid staying in New Mexico, though we did stop at a Walmart in Las Cruces overnight (in the motorhome). For whatever reason, it never entered our minds that we were planning to head across New Mexico again, this time in a car, and dependent on services outside of our vehicle!

We needed to stop for fuel, so decided to stop in Gallup, NM. Unfortunately, the fuel station that we selected did not have rest rooms. Oh well, we had planned to eat a sandwich from our packed supplies, but, instead, we'd stop at a fast food restaurant to use their rest rooms -- nope, they were only open for takeout or drivethru and no rest rooms were open! We stopped at two other fuel stations and they had no public restrooms. I was about ready to pee in the street just to make a point (that would have been interesting!) when we stopped at another fuel station and they had open restrooms (actually, locked restrooms, but they gave us the key). As we continued across the state, we came across a couple of rest areas that were open (we stopped at one, and it had two sets of restrooms - one set was open, one set closed). A sign on a casino that we passed indicated that it was open to New Mexico residents only.

We had planned to overnight in Tucumcari, but since we had found the state to be so lacking in welcome to travelers, that we pressed on another 100+ miles to Amarillo, trusting that Texas would show us hospitality. (Note: I have a very good friend and faithful blog reader in New Mexico, and I know that the *people* in New Mexico are welcoming, even if the businesses or the government is not!)

Regardless of the COVID restrictions, New Mexico has some beautiful scenery:

These looked like prows of ships across the flat ocean of desert.

Interesting formations along the road

It got very cloudy as we got further east in the state.

Gibbous moon rising -- it looked so huge but the photo doesn't capture it.

One of my friends says that the translation of "La Quinta" is "next to Denny's" -- we stayed in mid-city Amarillo -- it was nice because we could back the car right up to our room door and bring in all our "stuff" -- which is a lot since Miss Kitty is traveling with us.

We are now in Oklahoma, planning to make it into Missouri today (Monday).

The rental car -- it is pretty loaded as we will be in Indiana 10 nights, and have a room with a kitchen (Residence Inn), so we plan to do some of our own cooking while there. Plus, traveling with Miss Kitty is kind of like traveling with a baby -- she has a lot of items that need to travel with her (the La Quinta had a note in their pet rules that cat owners had to supply their own litter pan - duh!).

We are doing well so far, appreciate your continued prayers!