Scales Lake RV Park

Marty and I knew we would be spending some time down in Evansville but only found one RV park when googling. Thankfully my family knew of another park that doesn't advertise. Although it was in a smaller town called Boonville it was closer to their homes than the RV park in Evansville. And as it turns out Scales Lake is much funner!

They have places you can pitch a tent, park an RV, or even rent a cabin. The RV park has full hook-ups with both 30 and 50 amp power available. They have shower houses and a laundry room. The one thing they don't have is internet, but since Marty and I get that through our phones, it isn't a big deal. The place is gated and patrolled so it's really safe too.


That's our truck to the right, the 5th wheel is next to the truck just to the left. The picture below is to the right of this photo. And the photo after that is even further to the right.


This is on a week day where most of the park is empty. During the weekends, this place usually fills up by late Thursday.


The building on the right is the shower and laundry house, right behind it is one of the playgrounds. We also just had a semi pull in this last week pulling a 5th wheel. They are making semi's now where you don't need a CDL to drive them. Several people prefer to pull their 5th wheels with a semi as they are built to take a lot more weight than a truck.


This was our neighbor, who left this weekend. Do you know what that trailer is for behind it? It's his garage. It holds a classic T-Bird he likes to enter into old car shows. Doesn't that look like the life to live??


Pretty huh?

Anyway, that all covered the sleeping arrangements of the park.

Now for the recreation....

Pool house, swimming area, and water slide.

They have 3 play-grounds scattered throughout the park and the lake has a swimming area with a HUGE water slide (the swimming portion of the lake is closed in October). A pool house and a separate facility to rent out for weddings and other gatherings are both indoor. They also have a few roofed pavilions and gathering area's for large and small get-togethers.


This is a photo from behind the pool house and water slide. This is also where one of the playgrounds is.


You can launch a boat on the lake and go fishing, or as we prefer: let the dog go swimming and let loose some energy.



We've also been biking back here a lot, the kids love that.

BUT...

Our favorite part about this place?


The 24 hour/free petting zoo!


They have lots of goats...




..and sheep...


...and rams. This guy is just so gentle and sweet.


They also have ducks with weird heads...


And normal ducks...


And these are the white ducks, and the one in the center is a goose I think or is it a gander? Yes, a gander. He think he's pretty tough, but can be bought for a cheep price - chick weed and grass clippings.


This is the pony. He/she is not that great though. He wants nothing to do with you unless you have food, and IF you have food, he'll reach really far with his neck to snatch your food, so you can't touch any other part of him. The female donkey is the same way...

She just doesn't want anything to do with you either.


But, the male donkey we have come to LOVE! We're thinking we could turn the garage portion of our 5th wheel into a stable and take him with us. The kids can sleep in there with him, they think he's pretty great too.


The caretaker said his name is Poncho, but the gate keeper said his name is Jack. So who knows. His pen has a huge sign on it that says "HE BITES" so most people stay away from him, but we found he just wants to be loved! He sticks his head out and wants to be scratched and rubbed, and low and behold I discovered he gives kisses. He is our favorite.


The other neat thing about this place is, everyday the caretaker lets one or a few animals loose. They are allowed to wander all over the park. The other day we came out and discovered Poncho having lunch in front of our RV, the boys got to go right up to him and pet him. He's such a tolerate little thing.

They also have peacocks, turkeys, guineas, rabbits, and chickens.

And the funny thing is that they don't mind dogs coming with you to visit the petting zoo. Pete really trips out on all these animals. He doesn't know what to think of them, lol.

We'll definitely be remembering this place next time we're in town.

Cannelton, Indiana

Cannelton, Indiana


Cannelton

The kids and I went and spent the day with my great aunt and uncle a couple weeks ago, we had all sorts of fun driving around seeing different places. We went through Cannelton, Indiana on our drive. Up until that day I had never seen a boat go through a lock from start to finish. It was pretty neat.


The Ohio river serves as the state line and divides Kentucky and Indiana. Barges and boats of all types travel up and down the river. Back in the mid 1800's boats were only able to travel so far up the river before coming to a shallow or waterfalls, so in order for boats to travel all the way up the river they began putting locks and dams in back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Now they have 21 lock and dams spread out across about a 1000 miles along the Ohio River.


This is the Cannelton Dam, the large lock shown in the photo below is just where the sign that says "100" is.


This is a boat moving several barges down river. They just pulled into the lock here and are about to be closed in....


The gates to the lock are closing the boat and barges in.


Gates almost closed at the rear of the boat.


The boat is shut into the lock and is being lowered so it can continue down river. The lock here in Cannelton rises and lowers 25 feet.


Lowering...


Lowering...


Lowering...


Now their opening up the lower gates to let the boat and barges out and continue on down river. There is another lock on the lower right for smaller pleasure boats. The big boat lock is 110 feet by 1,200 feet long, and the smaller lock is 110 feet by 600 feet long.


This is the boat slowly moving out of the lock and on down river.


And here the boat and barges are, out of the lock and on their way to the next lock.

Neat huh?

Indiana

We're sitting here this morning hanging out in our 5th wheel doing some pre-schooling! BJ is doing dot-to-dot pictures learning what numbers look like and then coloring in the picture he made. He's doing pretty well with it. Someone gave us a ton of stickers I'll let him put on his picture after he's finished coloring. I'm also toying with the thought of how I'm gonna teach him to read. A bit intimidating. haha.



Edited to add: This is the photo he did this morning, isn't he getting so good?

We've been in Indiana for about a month now, hanging out with family. The 5th wheel has some custom work scheduled to be done in 2-3 weeks up in Elkhart at the Gulfstream factory, once that's finished we're thinking of heading towards Florida. It's still pretty warm here, but is getting cooler at night. It got up to 88 degrees here 2 days ago, which is just weird for October - well weird for us Alaskans anyway. Back home snow has already fallen, ice is gathering in the rivers and lakes in little patches and we're wearing shorts down here. It's just weird.

I have a few neat pictures to share from our trip down to southern Indiana. We stopped and visited one of my aunts on the way down, she lives in Indianapolis. I'm really looking forward to spending more time there, a weekend was just not enough.


This is the Indiana World War Memorial Building. They have a ton of very neat monuments downtown but this was the only one we were able to stop by (it was next to a place we had breakfast at!)


This is the Twisted House. We found it at the Indianapolis Art Center on their grounds called "Artspark". I had seen this online somewhere and thought it would be a fun thing to go find.