More cornfields! The scenery wasn't anything too exciting, though it does give you a certain scope of just how much farmland there is in midwest America.
Sometime in the morning as I was pedaling along I saw a baby bird just chilling along the roadside. I swung back and it was still there, so I picked the little guy up, took a bunch of pictures because he looked pretty cool, then put him back down in the grass a little farther back off the roadside. I'm pretty sure his mom was chirping/yelling at me from the powerlines above, but damn, don't be leaving your baby in the road!
A little while after I was sitting at an intersection wondering how in the hell the numbering system for these roads worked, as I was staring at a road sign post for 500 E road & 500 N road. Right then an older gentleman in a truck rolled up and asked if I needed directions or anything, I told him no but was very curious how the road naming worked. He was more than happy to explain it to me: (grabbing the following from Wikipedia because it explains it better)
Most Indiana counties use a numbering system for designating county roads based on a grid. The system is similar to latitude and longitude on the globe, where numbering begins at the Equator and Greenwich Prime Meridian, respectively.
Typically, the north-south road that divides the county into east and west parts is named "Meridian Road", and the east-west road that divides the county into north and south parts is named "Division Road". Roads in the county are identified by the distance (in miles) from the baseline, multiplied by 100, followed by the compass direction from the baseline. For example, road "200 E" would be a north-south road located 2 miles east of the meridian line, and road "350 N" would be an east-west road located 3.5 miles north of the division line.
I ended my day at a campground at Fletcher Lake. I checked it out online and it's webpage raved about how it was a great stop for cyclists. When I got there it turned out to be a small field next to the lake filled with 2 rows of 5th wheel campers set up for the season with about 30 feet between them, filled with picnic tables and campfire rings. Though initially it seemed kind of... mediocre, as I made my way over I was greeted by a bunch of people who were packing up for the day (as it was Sunday, they were there for the weekend in their campers.) They immediately said they were sorry I didn't get there sooner as they loved taking out cyclists in their boats, and one of the guys, a retired state trooper, came over and handed me a beer.
He told me I should have been there yesterday as a cyclist from Massachusetts was spending the night there and they had a big chicken cookout for him. We started chatting and he was telling me how there are 6 different types of meat on a turtle and how great it tastes, and also how the campground had 4-5 "wild" pet rabbits that just hung out around the campers that they fed. Then as they left they told me to feel free to use their paddle boat tied up to the dock if I wanted to go over to the far side of the lake to swim.... soooo I took out the paddle boat and swam!
As the sun went down I made my way back to shore and jumped into my tent, again, the only person in the campsite... falling asleep, I heard sounds of rabbits hopping around my tent.
Start: Zanesville, IN
End: Fletcher, IN
Distance: 75.14 miles
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