After stopping on the Granville Bridge on August 4, I made the obligatory stop at the cemetery. But my photos weren’t as good as the ones I’ve already posted from the September 2006 ride.
Then I rode straight south to West Point. I was riding into a small wind and was feeling the effects already. It’s almost embarrassing to tell about it, but it’s true. I had only ridden 25 miles or so by the time I got to West Point, but I was in need of a rest and nourishment.
I usually expect to be more tired on the 2nd day. That’s why I had spent the morning in the library. Sometimes on a 2nd day I can’t get untracked until the afternoon, anyway. But even with a morning’s rest, the southward parts of this ride were laborious.
I finally got to West Point, a place where I had stopped on a ride 7 years earlier. I was disappointed to see how washed out the left part of this photo was. Now that I’ve looked at the historic maps more carefully, I’m even more disappointed. It’s just on the north side of the railroad track. In the full-size version of the photo, one can see the red railroad crossing light.
The photo was taken at the point marked in the middle of the photo. The thing I just now realized is that the road here is one that follows an old reserve line. I knew I was going to be visiting Burnett’s Reserve. That was one of the goals of this ride. But I like to collect photos of roads that follow the old reserve boundaries, and here I was on the east boundary of the one I had come to visit, and didn’t realize it.
Here I’ve marked my route in red on a snippet of the 1878 atlas of Tippecanoe County. Burnett’s Reserve is the big partial-rectangle that isn’t square with the world. The location of the old store building by the railroad tracks is circled in blue.
I’ve looked for more information about the Margaret Hall who owned property there, possibly including the building that’s marked on the map, but haven’t come up with much. The 1870 census lists a Maggie B. Hall in Union Township as someone who was then 29 years old, born in Ohio, “Keeping House,” and married to Benj.(?) J. Hall, whose occupation was listed as “T&Com. Mckt” according to my best attempt to read the handwriting. I suppose Mckt stands for market. It looks like there were two Halls in the exact same business — maybe this store was operated as a partnership between brothers?
Well, that’s not what I had come for. But before I got to the parts I had come for, I needed a bite to eat, if possible, and I definitely needed more to drink than the two bottles of water I had left the campground with.
I remembered this picnic table along the road from a memorable ride in May 2001. I was glad to see it was still there, and I was even more glad to see that there was a functioning convenience store. It doesn’t have as much character as the old store by the railroad tracks, but I was glad to see it. (It’s at the location marked by the 2nd blue circle on the 1878 map.)
I bought a cold sandwich, an ice cream bar, water, and iced tea. The day before I had gotten buy with skimpier amounts of food than that. The desire for more food is also typical of day 2 of my outings.
I took my time with my late afternoon meal before proceeding to my next stop.