We rolled down there Saturday afternoon and checked into our really dumpy motel just north of 17th Street on Walnut and then drove into town and pondered the possibilities for an early dinner and decided to eat at Bistro et Crèpe on 4th Street. This is a place that has evolved over time since it opened a few years ago as a coffee and crèpe place. We tried a crèpe there once but the service was so slow that we could never convince ourselves to go back, other than for coffee the last time we were in Bloomington. When I got the coffee that last time, though, I noticed that there was quite a bit more on the menu than just coffee and crèpes, so we marked it as a place to try for an actual meal on some subsequent visit. I’ll spare you the details here, as there will be a separate post about the meal (with pictures!) forthcoming.
So...we had our early dinner and chose not to go walking that afternoon because it was so hot and humid (thunderstorms were forecast for later that night, which promised that Sunday would be much more comfortable for going walkabout), so we ran around to various places that were air-condidtioned, including the mall and Best Buy and Borders and then got back to the dumpy motel (where there was water leaking from the ceiling in the hallway just beyond the hallway that contained our room) and turned out all the lights to listen to and watch the promised thunderstorms that had developed while we were running around and began to fire shortly after we got back to the motel - but the parking lot lights were very bright and shone directly into our room, which spoiled the effect of a reasonably vigorous line of storms that were blowing rain almost sideways at one point. After the storm died down, we had cheesesticks delivered from Mad Mushroom (Oh. Hell. Yeah.) and then called it a night.
We checked out of the dumpy motel at around nine the next morning and went for coffee at a place called The Copper Cup at 8th and College, thinking that it would be a nice indie place to get a non-Starbucks cup, but...not so much. The coffee wasn’t bad, but The Copper Cup does not scream out indie coffee shop so much as it screams out that it desperately, desperately wants to be Starbucks. The shelves of merchandise for sale at the front of the store, the espresso bar itself, the menu boards, and the layout of the café section are all clearly modeled on Starbucks. There were even two big fluffy purple chairs that looked like someone had stuffed Barney and placed him strategically as furniture. Like I say, not bad coffee - but the ambience leaves much to be desired, especially for someone like me, who has been terribly spoiled by the indie-ness of two exceptional Indianapolis coffee shops, Lazy Daze and The Abbey.
With coffee in hand, we set off back toward the motel, because directly across Walnut Street from it is Miller-Showers Park, a little park that was built several years ago and which I see every time I come into town on College (its borders are, roughly, Walnut Street east, College Avenue west, 17th Street south, and its northern edge is a non-thoroughfare about halfway between 17th Street and the bypass). I always mean to check it out, but this was the first time we actually got around to doing it. The park’s function is to filter water from a large part of downtown Bloomington before sending it further downstream (or possibly upstream - the park moves water from south to north), and there is a walking trail that circumscribes the greenspace and the retention pools - Amy spotted a bullfrog in the water at the south end. I have some photos of the park here, and you can check out a Powerpoint slideshow about the park here (somewhat bulky PDF file, option-click to download).
So then...after coffee and Miller-Showers Park, we drove into town and parked the car and started walking around campus, up the brick path leading into the woods next to the Kirkwood Observatory, behind Lindley Hall, past the new Simon Hall building, then down the steps into the Ballantine Hall courtyard and then across that little service street to the path that runs along and across the Jordan River behind Woodburn Hall and the Lily Library.
The shots that follows this paragraph are all of the Jordan River, a normally peaceful little stream that flows through most of the heart of the Bloomington campus. It is so peaceful that it is sometimes referred to jokingly as the “Mighty” Jordan. A little over a month ago, however, it was clearly mighty. The massive flooding that occurred then did some major damage to a number of counties in south central Indiana, and you can see in these pictures just how high the water got and how much of the bank it carved away. The first two shots are between Ballantine Hall and the back of Woodburn Hall, where the river curves a lot.
This last shot is near the sidewalk that leads out to Jordan Avenue. If you look closely at the water, then look to the right, you'll see where the water stops and what looks like debris starts. I'm pretty sure that line is what used to be the bank of the river - before the flood. The bank is now located several feet farther to the right, under the treeline.
I was expecting to see some damage along the Jordan River because of the massive scale of the flooding, but I was taken aback at some of the things I saw - especially things like that second shot, where great sections of a tree's root system were exposed by the rushing water. I only have the handful of photos, though, because I never got around to getting a memory card for our camera. For various reasons (including almost always being near my computer to upload them), the seventeen or so photos the internal flash memory could hold were sufficient - but not so on this trip. However, for the modest sum of thirteen bucks, I got a memory card - the lowest-end one, don'tcha know? - that boosts the photo capacity of the camera to over five hundred pictures. I don't know that I'll have the occasion to get back to Bloomington anytime soon, but if I do, there will be a lot more pictures of the wrath of the Mighty Jordan.
We finished up the trip with lunch at the Runcible Spoon and a dash over to Nashville. A separate post on the Runcible Spoon will also be forthcoming, with picture, but for now this concludes the tale of our latest trip to Bloomington.
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