Indiana, Part 3 - Rain Day in Turkey Run State Park [240704]

(Posted 250926) Happy Independence Day!

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The forecast was for rain most of Thursday, so it was a good thing that we were scheduled for a few days in the Turkey Run area (a "we have to go hiking since we're only here for a day" mud-slog-hike didn't sound like a particularly fun way to spend our Independence Day 😉).  The plan was to get up "whenever" and then drive straight in to the state park to get a parking spot, since it was still possible that it might fill up with 4th of July visitors despite the inclement weather.  The rain woke us up around 8:30 a.m., so we brought in our power cord and headed out.

In our recent travels we had come across a number of campgrounds that had power hookups in all of the sites - including the "tent-only" ones - and we were always curious about why tent-campers would need power outlets.  One of our more creative neighbors answered the question for us:

It was pouring puppies and kitties when we pulled into the main state park parking lot 10 minutes later, so we found a spot (not difficult, as there were only a couple of other cars in the parking lot at the time) down by the Nature Center.  While having breakfast and doing our morning routine, we researched nearby public libraries in the area that might have free Wi-Fi available from the parking lots for later in the afternoon.

When we were ready, we darted (since it was still raining) over into the Nature Center where we browsed the various displays . . .

. . . which included a number of live critters - some of which were cute, like this Eastern Grey Tree Frog:

. . . as well as some that we'd be perfectly happy not to run into on a future hike, like the Black Rat Snake (supposedly harmless to humans), Kingsnake (less harmless), Copperhead Snake (dangerous enough to never want to run into), and Dark Fishing Spider (just..."eek!"):

We also watched the park movie in the taxidermy-animal-lined theater.

While waiting for the movie to start, we discovered that the Nature Center had pretty decent public Wi-Fi.  Perhaps more importantly, after the movie we found a nice little wildlife viewing room with benches next to a power outlet!  We got our laptops from the T42, and spent the rest of the rainy afternoon working on our laptops while listening to the sounds of the birds and brook being piped in through speakers from the outside . . .

. . . occasionally being distracted by the antics of raccoons coming to steal food.

We stayed in the viewing room until the Nature Center closed at 5 p.m., at which time we moved to the front porch to keep working (the Wi-Fi didn't reach much past that point, unfortunately) until around 8 p.m. (with a break to scrounge dinner in the T42) when we finished and published the Wyoming blog post.

The temps had cooled down to 68 degrees by the time we headed to bed around midnight, so we were able to sleep pretty well with just the windows open and MaxxFan on low that night.  The forecast was for a drier day tomorrow, and we were looking forward to being able to do some hiking.