Before we left California, we loaded up with our favourite Trader Joe goodies, believing we had plenty and that we’d come across other Trader Joe’s along the way. As you know, if you’ve been reading this journal, we didn’t encounter anymore Trader Joe’s and for the last few days I have been rationing what we have left of our stuff. In case you are wondering what the goodies are they consist of organic steel cut oat meal (which is available everywhere but not at TJ’s price), praline granola sweetened with maple syrup, almond milk, dried unsulphured pineapple and a variety of nuts available only at TJ’s at their great low prices. (We eat the oatmeal with almond milk and a little granola sprinkled on it for breakfast.)

Our destination today was Indianapolis because it is the closest place with a Trader Joe’s store; in fact in all of Indiana the only two TJ’s are in Indianapolis. After our restful Wal-Mart sleep last night (definitely the most peaceful Wal-Mart we have ever stayed at), we were on the road by 10:00 this morning. This time we stuck to the I-65 from Athens, east of Florence all the way to just south of Indianapolis. Tonight our “park” is a Flying J truck stop and tomorrow we will boogie into Wakarusa where we will be staying for a few days.

We arrived at the Flying J just after 5:00 PM (or so we thought) and after Rick unloaded the car we headed into the city on a quest for Trader Joe products. Know this; GPS systems are life savers but only if the address you are seeking is programmed in it correctly! Yours truly screwed up the closest TJ address royally and after driving to it and not finding TJ’s we drove to the second one. We were able to stock up on some of the vitamins (more TJ goodies at a great price) but, alas, they were out of the cereal! Then I learned that we were really close at the wrong address and one of the clerks called the first store to make sure they had the missing items. They did, so we drove back and finally after some driving around we located it only to find out that while we were running on the assumption that Indianapolis was in the central time zone, learned they were in the eastern time zone! We arrived at the store 10 minutes after they closed!!!!

Fortunately, the manager either felt sorry for us or liked us because we were Canadian (his mom was born in Flin Flon, Manitoba) and he let us in to get our beloved morning meal. We arrived back at the motorhome a little confused about the time because our cell phone tells us it is central time and usually the cell phone is accurate. Anyway, it’s late, we’re tired no matter what time it is but we are happy that tomorrow we’ll be able to have more than a tablespoon of granola on our cereal.

And thanks to Trader Joes for this picture!