Amanda and Graham's Great Pig Adventure

Wednesday 11th March

Nothing to report! A quiet day in our hotel day rooms with just an excursion to Walmart across the road for the weekly bus stock-up. It was raining all day and we are at our usual out of town location. We saw on the weather reports that there had been tornadoes yesterday quite close to here. We seem to have been dodging the weather so far, either just ahead or just behind some bad storms as we move around. Good planning!!! It was a bit of a shock to experience temperatures of 6 degrees today though, with a biting wind. Time for the winter clothes to come out of the cases and to say goodbye to shorts and t-shirts for a while now. Nice to switch off and catch up with a few things!

Our group of six are meeting in our room to play cards this evening as we had fun last time we did that. Then the buses roll at midnight….

Anderson, Indiana

Thursday 12th March

A beautiful day with blue skies but cold at 6 degrees. We had plenty of time before a 3.30 soundcheck for a 6.00 show so we went for another long walk, by the White River. Not many birds about and nothing new, but we saw a groundhog! Lots of very tame and adorable squirrels too – Eastern Fox Squirrels, a bit larger than our greys with quite a bit of red in them and extravagantly bushy tails! The walk went through a wetland area too and after asking for help from locals we found a covered bridge. We are in Madison County which reminded me of the film “Bridges of Madison County” so I did a Google search for covered bridges. This is apparently not the main area for them but there is one small one which we eventually found.

Today’s theatre had a beautiful auditorium – very ornate with a painted sky ceiling. It dates from 1929 and was built to give the illusion of a Spanish Casa. It has a Page organ (noted in the only Planet guide, otherwise we would never have known!) which comes up through the floor, like a Wurlitzer, which is one of only two remaining in their original sites. We asked a member of the theatre staff if we could see it and he took us down under the stage for a look! We had a lively audience today, quite noisy but appreciative.

A lot of the cast and orchestra are playing “Traitors” so they had a round table meeting after the show. We have never seen the TV programme so opted out, but it has become a big ongoing feature of the tour!

Later we had a message to the group inviting us all to play hide and seek in the darkened auditorium. Very silly indeed and great fun! Oh, the joys of touring…!