There are approximately 240 square miles in Vanderburgh County, including 477 miles of County Roads and 75 miles of Highways. There’s plenty of pavement to take us where we need to go – or to where we might like to explore.
I like to get off the beaten path and investigate side roads that look interesting. It seems we often save this kind of random exploration for vacations, but if you allow enough time in your day (this is coming from someone who is chronically rushed) to take an alternative route in your daily travels, or just head out on an interesting drive, it can be eye opening.
It’s easy to live in our own little worlds. I have remarked that my whole world is within a radius of just a few miles on the East Side and Downtown. (I live very close now to where I grew up, shopped, and went to school, and that’s very close to where my kids go to school.)
Not everyone here lives in an urban neighborhood, of course, like I do. I like to see how people live differently. So for me, it’s fun to take a drive in the county, where the roads wind over the hills, and I’m likely to see something I’ve never before seen.
That’s what I did just this week. Returning from an interview on the far West Side, I decided I had time to explore parts of the county that weren’t very familiar to me, a task made easier, and more difficult, by voice guided navigation. (The ubiquitous voice, “Redirecting,” “Recalculating,” or “Proceed to the Route,” is too annoying to use for truly spontaneous exploration; just turn it off.)
A 20-minute or so detour yielded a lovely road, woods still speckled in fall color, and a new view of the
Ohio River.
