The summer of 1980 is special to us. We met and started our lives together. Melanie was an undergrad and Jim was in grad school at Eastern Illinois University. A mutual friend, Dan, introduced us over lunch in the cafeteria of the dorm complex.
It was a hot summer in several ways. One weekend, we rented some camping equipment and headed for Shades State Park in Indiana about an hour away. We set up camp, hiked some trails, and rented a canoe to float Sugar Creek through the park.
Was this before or after we drove to town, just to buy chocolate??
It’s still true: Melanie poses with rocks, and Jim poses with trees.
See?
Many years have gone by since our visit to that special place. This year, we planned a road trip to West Virginia to meet our daughter and her family, who live in the Washington DC. The highway eastward took us only a few miles from Shades. We decided it was time to visit that park again and hike some trails, this time in the winter.
Our View From Iowa 