02/04/2024
’Outdoor Ingrid’
Today, Ingrid and I leave Louisville, Kentucky. Bound for southern Arkansas, via Memphis, Tennessee, we take US65 south, toward Nashville. I’m behind the wheel and on the road by 10:00am.
From the back of the van, Ingrid tunes and lightly strums her guitar. Between chords, she says she’s loving our time on the road. She laughs, ‘that trick with The Detective was the scariest, and most exciting and fun thing I’ve ever done!’ ‘It’s sure different than camping with my family!’
I tell her I love her company and I’m thrilled with the luck we’re having. ‘But’, I admit, ‘between the urban boondocking, the research and meetings, it has been a bit strange’. I promise to look for a rustic, secluded location, soon, ‘where we can stay a few days’.
Like a duck on a June bug, Ingrid jumps on the opportunity,. She whips out her phone and pulls up a regional forecast. She reports, ‘tonight’s temperatures for the Nashville area will be in the 20s. We decide to find a camping spot outside of Nashville, and rough it tonight.
Since leaving Omaha nine days ago, I’m learning more every day about my Omaha Angel. Ingrid grew up on a farm near Jamestown, North Dakota. She says she’s of ‘mostly Swedish and Norwegian descent’. Her mother died when she was four and her father remarried. He’s a big Hank Williams fan. Ingrid has two big brothers, two older sisters and a younger sister. She has a good singing voice and plays some guitar. She loves the great outdoors and rural life. She’s content reading alone in silence. Generally quiet and reserved, she sometimes seems aloof. Sometimes she’s cold. Sometime she glows. She has a natural sweetness, maturity and consideration for others. Her unique freshness and vitality along with exceptional beauty and intelligence are powerfully attractive. She’s fresh and pure in personality and appearance, with laser focus and a quick wit. Her lack of make-up projects an air of nobility. She’s my Angel and the ideal of American womanhood.
At about 1:00pm, I pull the Sprinter into Cedars Of Lebabon State Park, just east of Nashville. We check our campsite before settling in. In a nicely-wooded area, we get electric and water hookups, wi-fi, a picnic table and grill. There’s also a laundromat and dump station and a bathhouse nearby, with hot showers and bathrooms. Ingrid okays our site before we head into Lebanon for groceries, firewood and some sightseeing. On our return, I plug in and set up camp as Ingrid settles in with a book. By 4:30, I’ve built a good fire and am preparing our campfire dinner.
As the sun sets, we’re enjoying fried-egg, bacon-cheese burgers, cottage-fried potatoes and beans. We wash it all down with cold Miler High Lifes, and finish with graham-cracker s’mores and Jack Daniels on ice. Bundled up, under a sleeping bag, before a raging fire, Ingrid dozes in my arms. I carry her to the Sprinter and tuck her in.
‘Goodnight Angel’.
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