We planned to leave Cave Country RV Campground at 8:30 AM this morning and ended up pulling out around 9 AM.  We only had 156 miles to travel but would cross into the Eastern Time Zone “adding” an hour to our arrival time.  Construction on northbound I-65 between Elizabethtown and Louisville had the highway down to one lane and traffic was stop and go, but mostly stop.  It took us 45 minutes to travel four miles and complete the merge.  A restroom break at a Pilot Truck Stop added another 15 minutes turning a three hour trip into a four hour one.  We pulled into Columbus Woods-N-Waters Kampgound around 2 PM EDT.  We set up quickly, and a PB&J sandwich and some water, and headed for Columbus, Indiana.

RVers and pickup truck owners may be aware of the existence of Columbus, Indiana as the home of Cummins, Inc.  The corporate headquarters are here along with the Plant One production facility.  The Midrange Plant is five miles south of town in Walesboro, not far from Columbus Woods-N-Waters Kampground.  We planned a one night stop here because it got us 156 miles farther north on I-65 and because Columbus is a town I have wanted to visit for a long time.  Not because of Cummins, although we would have enjoyed a factory tour, but because the town of only 44,000 is famous for its modern architect-designed buildings.  It started with a church designed by Eliel Saarinen in 1942 and now includes churches, businesses, schools, government buildings, and public art.

We put the address of the visitor center in our GPS and made that our first stop.  We purchased a map for $3 that marked the location of 78 things to see.  The map included a picture of each object along with the name, architect/artist, year, and address.  About half of these were in the walkable downtown area and the other half were spread out through the rest of the city.  We walked the downtown area first and then drove past a few other sights before heading back to camp.

 

 

Among the architects who have designed buildings in Columbus the best known are Eliel and Eero Saarinen and I. M. Pei.  Among the public art the best known artists are sculptors Dale Chihuly and Henry Moore.  The Cummins, Inc. corporate headquarters building occupies a whole city block and we took our time walking around it and photographing it.  As it turns out, Cummins was a major factor in how Columbus came to be a center of modern architecture.  Starting in the 1950’s, the Cummins Engine Foundation made funds available to cover the architect’s fees for any school building project in which the architect was selected from a list drawn up by the Foundation.  The community responded and the Foundation expanded the program to include other public buildings.  Other companies and congregations decided to pursue world-class architects and “modern” Columbus emerged.  This place looks and feels different, embracing “the concept that the built environment is crucial to a quality community.”

We have tried these last four months to not race from one thing to another.  If we decided to visit a place, we tried to allocate enough time to experience it.  Not completely, of course, as I am not sure that’s ever possible, but at least sufficiently that we felt it was worth the trip.  We have not always been successful, but on balance have done well with this approach.  Columbus, however, is a place where we could have used more time and more energy.  We also found most of downtown closed on a Saturday afternoon.  The next time we pass this way we will try to plan 3 – 5 nights, not all on a weekend, but not this time.  We have our sights set on home.

 

 

Columbus Woods-N-Waters Kampground is a Good Sam park, but not the sort of place we normally stay.  It is carved out of a stand of tall 6″ to 15″ diameter trees with gravel roads that meander through the forest and gravel sites that split off this way and that.  The arrangement appears almost random, but I suspect it was dictated by trying to save as many trees as possible.  Most of the rigs here are pull-behinds with an equal mix of trailers and 5th wheels, a truck camper with a tent, and six motorhomes, including ours.  Every rig is in a site, but it looks like people parked wherever they wanted.

There are large groupings of people here involving multiple RVs.  The group across from us must have 40 people, including lots of kids.  They had a NASCAR race on.  Around 9:15 PM someone shot off fireworks.  Yup, fireworks.  Not really our kind of place, but we are only here for one night and it was convenient to the highway with reasonably good site access and 50A power.  And we picked 27 OTA TV stations from the general direction of Indianapolis.  Only 10 of them were useable, but they included PBS and Create, so we were happy.