The Road Called our Names

The sun came up and burnt off all traces of rain from the week before from the road. Rooster and I had a rare Saturday to ourselves. The Bossy Posse had better things to do than hang out with the old folks. Temperatures promised to remain on the cool side, making it the perfect day for a motorcycle ride. Rooster and I spent the day with Brett, Lynn, and Dave riding down Indiana’s highways because the road called our names.

The game we played when the road called our names.

We have a game we play every summer. It’s called the Passport Ride. A motorcyclist belonging to ABATE of Indiana can print off a passport and travel by motorcycle to various points of interest in the state and take a picture in front of a sign with a motorcycle holding the passport. You can also choose to visit sponsors or do the ABC part of the ride. The ABC rules mean you visit cities in the state where the name starts with a letter in the alphabet.

Rooster demonstrating holding a classic Passport Ride move.

We picked Quincy, Indiana to be our first stop on the ride when the road called our names. The small community is hidden in the woods in Owen county. The town in the only place in Indiana where we could get a Q. Unfortunately, we discovered the bridge over Brush Creek closed due to construction. We could take the 25 minute detour, but chose to take a picture of the bridge instead.

Brett climbed down the embankment and came back with a prize. lynn went home with a turtle on the day when the road called our names.

After discovering the road closed we had important decisions to make. We took a long break before venturing on to our next stop, which would include two state parks, Bean Blossom, Bloomington, Gnaw Bone, and Nashville, Indiana.

One of the points of interest we stopped to photograph included the Indiana University football stadium. For people not familiar with Indiana colleges, IU resides in Bloomington, Indiana.

Rooster and I are former IU employees. Before we retired, we worked at one of the satellite campuses in another part of Indiana. We refer to the main campus in Bloomington as the Mother Ship.

We stopped at the entrance of Brown County State Park to snap a picture on the day the road called our names. Now which way do we go? We headed for Nashville since we’d left Bloomington.

I included this picture on the day the road called our names so you could see how skinny Rooster is getting. look, he can button up his vest without sucking in his gut.

I’m getting skinny too. My vest is buttoned even with a hick sweat shirt underneath. Yay!

I took a few pictures as we glided through downtown Nashville. The area is loaded with shops featuring work by local artists. Rooster and I like to come here and hang out for the day, but this adventure entered around moving on. Our next stop on the day the road called out names will be the small city of Bean Blossom.

The main attraction in Bean Blossom is the Bill Monroe Campground. The bluegrass music legend Bill Monroe bought this piece of land as a place to hold festivals in 1952. The Bean Blossom Boogie held at this spot was one of the biggest parties around until it was moved to another location. A Bluegrass Museum exists on this spot.

We arrived at this location late in the day, but I did get to go inside the museum and look around on the day the road called our names.

Gnaw Bone is one of those quirk little places you wouldn’t even know was a town if you didn’t know it was there. They don’t have a courthouse or any city buildings. What this community does have is a funny sounding name and a lot of flea markets. Nobody knows the origin of the name. Some people claim it got its name because people were so poor that they set on their front porches and gnawed on bones as cars drove past. Others claim it was because a dog sat beside the road working on a bone. My guess is it came from a distortion of the name of a French city, but who knows.

We stopped for dinner. As we were living, Lynn spotted these balloons in the sky. They seemed to follow us most of the way to Indianapolis. The sunset as we made our way home. The balloons made a perfect ending for the day the road called our names. We rode back to our normal lives, but we have a most awesome adventure saved in our memory banks.