to Illinois 13-15th Sept

We awoke to the view of the lake on our camper doorstep (as we had the pitch closest to the lake), it was glorious; we had arrived at dusk so had not really appreciated it last night. But no time to dally.. I had an Internet connection last night so wrote a few emails, checked bank accounts etc and id a bit of research on the local area (Napanee, Indiana). It turns out that there is a large Amish population around here. In fact they were here before other settlers as they always bought up really cheap land before it had been settled in any way and did all the work to clear and drain the land. So we decided to go and visit an Amish homestead that is now open to the public. The last Amish occupier died in 1968 and now a few other Amish buildings have been moved on to the land and you can walk around in small groups with a guide who explains all the Amish traditions and beliefs.

The Amish are a Christian sect that got fed up with the Catholic church and all its riches in the middle ages. They wanted to return to a life like Christ, where the first are last and the last first, a simple life with no possessions (like Jesus) and a love and tolerance for others. They were persecuted for ages in Germany, Switzerland and Holland so when the chance came to emigrate some did. The homestead we visited was the first Amish homestead in Indiana in 1870 something. A few years later when a railroad was built within a mile of the homestead the town of Napanee grew up and even more Amish moved here.

The homestead is about 80 acres, the original house still stands (but was extended in the early 1800's to add a new kitchen, prayer room and bedroom. There is a second small (grandparents) house that was built when the original owner got old and his son took over the farm, a smoke house where all the meat was cured, an outside oven made of brick that once heated in the morning retained its heat so that baking could be done all day, a barn, a coach house, an outhouse (privy) and a cool room dug into the ground. Added from around the district to preserve buildings that would otherwise have been destroyed are a bakery, a meat and cheese store, a general store with original marble soda fountain (like a big drinks cabinet but for ice cream and fizzy drinks (made fizzy with phosphates apparently), an Amish school house with the original Amish school bus cart (painted in yellow like the regular US school buses) and a smithy's workshop with all the original tools, the fire with the bellows etc.
The house had lots of original furniture, beds and tables, sideboards and chairs all beautifully hand carved, old irons, pots and pans and, of course, the beautiful quilts that can take up to 800 hours to complete. There were some of the old clothes, the adults will not wear visible buttons because they were a symbol of the military and they were conscientious objectors, the women pin themselves into their dresses each morning using normal sewing pins (I'm sure they must get dislodged in the day whilst they are working and it must be very painful), we have seen them walking around and I had assumed that they were big tacking stitches. Men are clean shaven until they are married and then they grow a beard (and depending on their sect they may never shave it again), but they never have a moustache. The young men have pudding bowl haircuts and all wear blue shirts and braces, they can wear a Tom Sawyer style straw hat. The older men wear black hats with white shirts and braces. The women all cover their hair with a white prayer cap that is apparently the first thing they put on in the morning and the last thing taken off at night. Children can have buttons and are not baptised, they have not yet 'taken' the faith so are not blamed for their actions, however, when at 18 or older, they decide to get baptised then they must follow the rules of their sect, if they don't then they can be shunned for a time that is determined by the priest. (The priest is a man elected by the sect, he has no training but his word is the law.) From the age of 16 to 18 children are encouraged to go and live like the 'English' (that is what they call anyone who is not Amish), they can go to movies, wear any clothes they like, travel etc. Then they can decide to leave the sect but once they are baptised then the rules must be followed. After 21 then they can marry, it used to be that the man chose a wife and then the priest decided if that was ok, the woman had no say in the matter, but now it is by mutual consent and with the priests consent too.
It is a patriarchal society, children only go to school until they are 14/15 (they successfully challenged the state that tried to get the kids into the state school system on the grounds of religious freedom), they speak a mixture of Dutch and English (but this is not a written language) but all their bibles and religious meetings are held in High German (a mixture of German and Dutch). They now have running water and indoor toilets but still no phones, electricity or motorised vehicles. They are very business wise though. If the weather has been too bad to get in a normal harvest then they will pay a neighbour to use his motorised vehicles to get it in. They will hire 'English' and rent a building for them to work in with phones and electricity to run websites and telephone orders for their goods.

It was a fascinating day, and then we drove West until we saw a campsite sign on the edge of the road near Gary outside Chicago. It wasn't the nicest campsite but we cooked and ate and watched a DVD and slept. On the way in it said 'No enter' and Tristan commented that the owner must be Chinese, well there was no one in the office just a note to say they were out and to pay in the morning.. and guess what they were Chinese... we had to giggle.
14th Sept we whizzed past Chicago on the Interstate, we've decided that there isn't really anything that we want to do in Chicago so we're not!! The road was really busy, full of huge trucks and with loads of roadworks making the lanes really small, so it was a hairy scary time.
We are now happily ensconced by the Illinois River (at least 100m from bank to bank) in Illini State Park Campground just outside Marseilles, Illinois (our 5th state), Celso caught a big catfish on his first cast with a spinner (so he's happy). Tristan has learnt all about perimeters and areas of quadrilaterals, and areas of triangles, using algebra and numbers! And now the fire is set, the corn is ready to be cooked and the sun is shining. Happy times.
On the 15th we woke and had showers and then went for a long walk in the park and found some weird mushrooms (toadstools?) and a tree that had huge spines (we suppose as protection against animals eating its fruit). We wondered why there was no one around but then realised that we had crossed into a different time zone and that we should have put our clocks back an hour! On our way back to the van we spotted a huge groundhog out eating acorns but he was too fast for us so we couldn't get a photo. He was brownish grey (not like Punxsatawney Phil who was grey), and about two foot long, big and fat ready for hibernation I suppose.
We headed further west, today is day 10 of our drive and we had to do some laundry and boring cleaning so we headed for a campsite that boasted excellent facilities and found exactly what was claimed! So now we are clean, the beds are clean, the van is clean, Tristan has learnt all about energy, we have been for a long walk along the Hennepin canal in the blazing sun at 5.30pm - I got sunburnt on my shoulders and also bitten by mosquitoes! (How can it be so hot at 5.30pm at this latitude?) The canal is quite interesting because it was the first one ever to be made with concrete and had lots of experiments done on it, then all the technology was used to build the Panama canal. Unfortunately the canal is no longer in use, it only has one working lock but it is a haven for wildlife, we saw herons, frogs, beautiful dragonflies that look like they have pinned some butterfly wings to their backs (see photo) and lots of fish. Apparently there are loads of terrapins too but we didn't see any. They call them turtles here, but Celso and Tristan informed me that turtles are only found in the sea and have flippers.. terrapins have claws and live in fresh water --- so now you know too!