Just a short drive down the road from the Dodson Family Camp in Loogootee is quite an interesting place and person to visit. Bill Larkin lives in a geodesic dome house and absolutely loves to build birdhouses, and I mean LOVES to build birdhouses.
The yard around Bills home is literally covered with birdhouses of all shapes and sizes and those are accentuated by loads and loads of brilliantly painted rocks and various sorts of statues. It is an annual field trip for us when we are back home again in Indiana. This year, Eric, Jody, Jude, and Brody went along with us. I think the grandboys were overwhelmed, to say the least.
In addition to the huge display around the outside of Bill’s house, the inside is also festooned with birdhouses and thousands of twinkling Christmas lights. Bill always gets a kick out of watching the kid’s eyes light up when he claps his hands loudly and the house is filled with the sounds of chirping birds coming from hundreds of mechanical birds spread throughout his house.
Bill hosts visitors to his small home on a nearly daily basis, including busloads of tourists who have heard about his display somehow. He not only does not charge a penny to visit, but he also gives all his visitors a small hand-painted birdhouse to take with them as a memento of their visit.
I would say that Bill Larkin is certainly a “one of a kind” fellow. At least I do not know of anyone else who is so steeped in a similar life mission and he seems happy about life in general.
(I enjoyed this video that someone put together a couple of years back and posted on YouTube.)
Since we (along with most everyone else) have been “holed up” due to the ongoing pandemic, we have been visiting local parks and preserves and trying to keep our distance from everyone. So, I have been saving pictures that I have taken in dated file folders with the plan of making a series of blog posts about the places we have visited and things we have done over the past several months. As the weather turns colder our walking and hiking will be somewhat more of a challenge over the winter months. So, now seems like a good time to get started.
My first series of posts are going to focus on the one long-distance trip that we took this
Jude, Brody, Theresa, Jody, Eric, and Ron chowing down
year to southern Indiana back in August. Our son and daughter-in-law Eric and Jody, Jude, and Brody (2 of our 4 grandkids) decided that they needed to escape Florida for a while and decided to drive to the Dodson Family Camp that is located at the border of Daviess and Martin County Indiana. We had just about decided earlier in the year that this might be the first year that we did not make the long drive to Indiana for what has been our annual trip back home again to Indiana. But we had not seen Eric, Jody, Jude, and Brody for a long time, and this made us really want to go. We had a wonderful time visiting with them and then Theresa and I stayed for another couple of weeks.
So…we made Eric and family essentially “quarantine” for a couple of weeks in Indiana before we drove down for our trip. We all stayed at the camp and had an awesome visit and lots of fun. It has been many weeks since this trip and no bad news on the virus front came from it.
Since this blog is mostly about nature I have included some nature pictures, but mostly “family having fun” pictures while enjoying nature too. Just a bit of background, the Dodson Family Camp borders land that is owned by the West Boggs Park, which is a “bi-county” park located in both Daviess and Martin Counties. The centerpiece of the park is Boggs Lake, which is a
Out boating on Boggs Lake
620-acre lake (along with 400 acres of land and related activities) that was created for flood control measures back in the 1970s. My parents owned the camp for many years and when they both passed, I inherited the camp. Since then I have deeded the camp to the entire family as a Family Camp. Our 3 boys had loads of fun here with their grandparents and now our hope is that the next generation will also make some memories here. Theresa and I and our 3 boys were all born in the Indiana/Kentucky region. I was born and raised in Daviess County (Washington, Indiana specifically), Theresa was born and raised in Evansville, Indiana as well as our oldest son Kelly. Eric and Travis were born in Kentucky when we were living in Henderson, Kentucky. We moved to the Albany, NY area in 1982 so now we live around 900 miles away from the Dodson Family Camp.
Homemade Persimmon pudding courtesy of the neighbor
Anyway, there is a small woodlot between our camp and Boggs Lake and our next-door neighbors, who live there all year long are nature and outdoor-oriented people and they take care of the birds, trees, and flowers of both of our places and they also “babysit” our camp when we are not there (which is most of the time) including opening up for us when we plan a visit and close it up at the end of the season. We are lucky to have some great neighbors!
So, this first of a series of Indian posts is focused mostly on our Camp and some views of nature and fun between our cabin and the lake. Future posts will be about some of the field trips that we took while based at the Camp but venturing into the area around our “home grounds.” I hope you enjoy it.
Till next time, be safe and all the best,
Ron
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are common sites at the campJude lands a whopper
In addition to the huge display around the outside of Bill’s house, the inside is also festooned with birdhouses and thousands of twinkling Christmas lights. Bill always gets a kick out of watching the kid’s eyes light up when he claps his hands loudly and the house is filled with the sounds of chirping birds coming from hundreds of mechanical birds spread throughout his house.
