I’ve run into some crazy things over the years. I’ve traveled a lot and on this particular trip to Indiana, I saw the most insane thing that you are not going to believe even exist. And there’s a really odd story that goes with it. But I traveled from the west coast all the way out to the east coast to hook up with some subscribers in Indiana. And on my way out there, I noticed that the weather seemed to be getting worse and worse and worse and I wasn’t exactly sure why that was.

Well it turns out I was literally driving into a storm that delivered 17 inches of rain overnight to Missouri and Oklahoma alone. 17 inches overnight. This is out in Missouri right now. I just drove through 17 inches of rain in Oklahoma and I was able to stay behind the storm. But I mean this is insane. Look at this man. So I traveled through this rainstorm and made my way from New Mexico to Joplin, Missouri. And that’s where I posted up for the night because this storm was absolutely raging. And I had checked the weather prior and I thought I was right behind it.

I thought it had already passed and I was behind it. Turns out I was directly dead nuts in the middle of it. And chances are you haven’t heard a word about this on the mainstream media but you’re seeing full grown houses right there that are totally completely underwater. At any rate I find myself on the on my way to discover the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on the highway. But first I have to make it through this storm. We got tornado warnings and it’s been raining like you read about. So I pulled over because driving was hazardous.

I literally saw six different vehicles upside down off the road. And this is where I’m at. At the rest stop. I stuck myself in beside the little brick building and some trees. Hopefully if anything goes wacky it’ll protect me. This is night vision so there’s no stabilization sorry. It is what it is. Got the LE cab fully deployed. OK four wheel drive. Hooked it up. Hooked it up lovely. An off grade Trek put that monster 48 volt 220 watt solar panel on top for me. So here I am I’m in Joplin Missouri and there’s tornadoes to be to be expecting.

So I found this up and I’m parked under a little bit of an overhang. So hopefully this protects me. I’m building a little fortress back here. And once again while back again I backed into that tree. I backed into that tree so many times it’s unbelievable. I’ve got a Wi-Fi. I’m soaking wet. But I’ve got Wi-Fi. I’m using the GlocalMe because they still charged me another month and I’m going to use it. The Star Lake is right there. I can’t believe how small that Star Lake is. And I can’t believe how well it works.

But there’s a massive tornado siren over there. I really hope it doesn’t go off. 538. See what happens. So I successfully made it through the night and then headed straight to Indiana. I crossed over the Mississippi Bridge which I love the Mississippi River. Growing up I spent a lot of time confined in a room by myself but fortunately I had a lot of literature. And some of that literature was Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn. The kind of stuff that would shock people right now and probably send them into a safe space.

But on that I will digress. At any rate I continued moving on and I headed to Indiana. And where I was going out in Indiana is incredibly rural. And this is the scenery for many many miles. Now why would I drive this far do you say? Because I’m very well acquainted with these particular subscribers and I’ve hung out with them several times. And this time around the whole family was there or the extended family and they were doing traditional American things. You got to love when you get to somebody’s property and you have your own parking spot which is pretty badass.

Now I’m not going to show any faces or say any names but these people whatever you think of them from what I’m going to present to you right now you’re probably going to find out that you’re incredibly wrong or maybe you won’t. But on that I’ll digress. Here we go. Fancy, shiny. It’s not working is what she said so I’m going to see if we can fix that. Jen has a she has a uh she’s a gun whisperer. She just yells when she does it that’s all. It’s definitely effective. So I need to tell you a story about this young fella right here.

Two months ago, 60 days ago, there was a gun accident—not his own fault—but he literally blew his entire right middle finger completely off with a handgun. The hospital offered him fentanyl and OxyContin, and he declined them. Two months later, you’re seeing him do this. That’s because his parents raised him properly. How badass is that?

But wait, there’s one more person. Holy shit, those dead nuts. So after some dinner, after some chores in the yard, and things of that nature—checking things out, shooting the shit—the owner of the house says, “Hey, take a ride with me. I want to show you something that my company just built. You’re not going to believe this.” So we take a ride, and it’s quite a distance. He shows me a bunch of solar farms that are popping up all over Indiana.

People are buying really nice properties off the beaten path, way away from society, far beyond the suburbs, etc., and very wealthy people are putting up massive, property-value-reducing solar farms absolutely everywhere. So we’re talking about this, that, wiffle ball bats, things of that nature. For whatever reason, I mentioned to him that one time while working on my truck in the driveway, I noticed a bunch of butterflies flying directly over my driveway. Then I noticed it was millions of butterflies flying directly over my driveway. It turns out that where I live is directly in the migration path of the monarch butterfly. I told him this was really strange, that I put a drone up at the time, etc. I even put a video up on it back in the day because it was an amazing thing. I had never seen millions and millions and millions of monarch butterflies.

Then one time, I’m in Santa Cruz, and I find a bunch of eucalyptus trees directly on the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, California. It’s covered with monarch butterflies because that’s where they go for the winter apparently. That’s a strange thing, but whatever. I don’t think much of it. We get to the structure that his company just built. Oh, you’re not going to believe this. Here we go.

As far as the monarch butterflies go, put a pin in those for right now. So we finally arrive at the destination—the building that this guy built that he wanted to show me. He didn’t give me any hype. He didn’t tell me anything. He just said, “Hey, let’s go take a look at a project that we just finished.” So we did. Bear in mind, he never told me what this project was. When we got there, the parking lot was so big that the weather was different on one side of the parking lot than it was on the other. That was just absolutely crazy.

The structure itself was not what I was expecting whatsoever. At all. It instantly gave me flashbacks of the Denver International Airport for whatever reason. I’m not sure why, but just the intricacy in the building of this reminded me of the Denver airport. This place was absolutely crazy. The first thing I thought of was, “This must be some sort of a secret military base. They’ve got something underneath this that’s hidden from the public or something to that effect.” Because this looked like it was a “money is no object” kind of deal. “We’re gonna build this thing, and we’re gonna build it to our exacting specifications.”

This place was just simply a rest stop—a rest stop in Indiana. I’ve never seen such a thing. Bear in mind, I’ve stayed at an awful lot of rest stops over the years, and I always wanted to do a rest stop video, like the best rest stop. I thought the ones down in Louisiana were the best, but this blows them away by a mile.

Stay with me here because this is very interesting. As a videographer, an overlander, etc., I find myself setting up for the night many times in various rest stops all over the United States. I like to think that I pretty much hit all of them, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Rest stops are few and far between, and my biggest gripe is in most states, you’ll travel—you know, “Rest stop 27 miles.” You’ll finally get there; it’s getting dark, you’re tired, you’re looking to set up for the night and eat, and the rest stops will be closed.

Apparently, Indiana went an entirely different way with this by a lot. According to the people I talked to, Indiana is actually running their state budget properly, and it allowed them to build this $35 million rest stop. It’s called the Kankakee Welcome Center, and it’s sandwiched between the Kankakee River and Roselawn in northwest Indiana. It’s characterized by its modern design and wavy roof meant to represent the dunes of the region—sand dunes, waves, etc. They built around it a wetland that looks like it’s been there forever. I can’t believe how good of a job these guys did because it’s amazing.

It includes a large retention pond with a walkway and will feature murals and interactive displays. The center can be accessed on I-65 southbound, while another rest stop included in the nearly $35 million contract is accessible going north on I-65. This thing had just opened when I saw it. He never gave me a heads-up of what I was going to see. I had no idea. He said, “Let’s go take a look at a building project that my company just finished.” So we did.

When looking at it from the outside, this place is just absolutely massive. Massive. When you can’t get an entire property in frame with a drone that’s above the clouds, that’s amazing. I mean, this thing looks like an airport. This is the parking spot, and there’s the building way up there, and cars park on the other side. It’s massive. We still haven’t gone inside, and I still haven’t shown you everything else. I still haven’t shown you the craziest part about this entire story.

They built this entire place as an homage to everything that’s in the area, which includes Great Lakes, sand dunes, and windmills. Windmills. They definitely took it to heart because they went whole hog with this. I’ve never seen this before, and I’m probably pretty certain neither have you. Check this out. Again, Denver International Airport vibes all day long on this one. If you’ve ever traveled the United States—especially rural or wide-open spaces—you’ve seen the windmill farms, and they are absolutely everywhere. Indiana also has windmill farms as well as solar farms, like I mentioned earlier, but they pay homage to the windmills in a very unique way that I’ve never seen before.

When I say that, I’m referring to this. This is a full-size blade off of a windmill, and they are massive. What they did is they painted an amazing mural on this thing that is just phenomenal. Once again, murals—Denver International Airport vibes. But that’s just me. I’m always thinking in the conspiratorial realm because, well, that’s kind of where we live right now. This thing was crazy, and it was massive, and it was beautiful. But then it had the one-eye symbolism in it, and that just kind of freaked me out, but it is what it is.

At any rate, my friend built the structure. He wasn’t in charge of the design or painting the murals or anything to that effect, so I gave him a pass on this one. Outside, there are also some really amazing things that I’ve never seen at any other rest stop in the United States ever. And you’re talking to somebody that has done 450,000 miles in the last 10 years in the United States, and I believe I’ve hit pretty much every rest stop ever. When you’re walking around this place, you get more of the feel of an amusement park than you do a “quote-unquote” rest area.

They have not one but two different playgrounds. All the outside structures are made as intricately as the building itself—like no cost was spared. It was like somebody was building a property for Bill Gates, like his own personal rest stop. And who knows, it could be. I couldn’t help but get the idea that there was a hidden bunker underneath this because it didn’t make any sense. I’ve never seen anybody putting out this much money to build a rest stop. Even the benches were just insane. These things will last forever. It was just phenomenal. Words can’t describe it, and it’s a rest stop. Ironically, it’s the type of rest stop where you can’t actually park overnight, which doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever at all. It’s like a five-star hotel rest stop that you’re not allowed to use. But on that, I will digress.

This place was absolutely massive. Now let’s get to the strange part. Let’s go inside the building because it gets even crazier. Here we go. When you walk inside, you see the emblem of Indiana prominently displayed and very well-crafted on the floor. Again, no expense spared. It’s a very, very big building. Are you catching that? Are you catching that? Yeah, we’ll get back to that. The steel work, which is what my friend is completely responsible for, is amazing. He built the entire structure. The steel work is amazing. When they could have simply made it so that the building held up, they made it more like you’re walking into Epcot Center or Disneyland. It’s just crazy.

Well, you can see it. There it is. It makes no sense to me how this welcome center in Indiana is actually on the southbound side of the road heading out of Indiana. So if you’re coming into Indiana, it’s on the other side of the highway. But, you know, greater minds than myself. I don’t understand it, but whatever. Apparently, every year, sand cranes migrate to Indiana, and again, they’re paying homage to those. Look at the woodwork. Look at the steel work. It’s phenomenal. I’ve been a builder my entire life, and I mean the steel work, everything in here—the concrete, the tile on the floor, the marble—is just exquisite. And this is a rest stop. I can’t stress that enough.

Everything in here literally plays to the sand dunes, waves of the ocean, windmills, local traditions. Everything is tied in. Everything is represented in one way or another, which is an amazing thing for a state to be doing on their own, with no help from the federal government at all. You do not see Massachusetts building rest stops like this. As a matter of fact, you don’t see California building rest stops like this. Apparently, Indiana has some conservative, straight-laced people that are actually keeping their money—probably from all the solar farms that they’re selling ginormous swaths of land for. They’re putting it back into the community, it appears. But I just couldn’t shake the fact that there’s definitely a military bunker underneath here or missile silos or something to that effect. But I can’t prove it, so there it is.

One mistake they made is they have this interactive tablet right here, which is very, very large. It tells you about the history of the area—all these different things, blah blah blah. But the most important thing is they show a time lapse of this entire structure being assembled. For whatever reason, the electricians decided to put a high-pressure sodium light directly above it, so it looks like the sun is sitting in the middle. It kind of ruins it. But otherwise, they did a really good job, you know what I mean? It’s very, very cool that they show the entire building being constructed—from breaking ground to wrapping it up. I found that really, really interesting. I’m just gonna leave it at that, I guess.

Earlier in the video, I was blathering on about monarch butterflies and how they flew over my house. Then I found myself inadvertently in Santa Cruz, standing in front of eucalyptus trees where apparently the end of their migration is. They fly from wherever—they fly over my house—all the way to the other side of the United States to land in these eucalyptus trees in Santa Cruz for the winter. We were talking about that. I mean, just completely out of the blue, I brought the topic up. I don’t know why it happens, blah blah blah. Then we walk into this place.

Directly dead nuts center in the middle of this place is this—a large seal of the state directly in the center, as you would expect most states would do. But when you look straight up, it’s a massive collage of monarch butterflies. Just hundreds of them hanging there. It’s large. It takes up the entire peak that’s up there. I don’t know what you call that, the glass dome. But it was absolutely freaking me out that we were just talking about that about 20 minutes prior to arriving here. Not only did it show the monarch butterflies, but it goes on to explain their migration cycle, the reason why they migrate, and their life cycle.

I found that absolutely insane. Out of all the things we could possibly be talking about on the way out here, for some reason, monarch butterflies popped into my head, and we were talking about it. He didn’t say a word until we got there. I mean, what are the odds in an absolute million years that that would happen? I found that very curious. If you’re in the conspiratorial vein, you’ll understand that monarch programming and MK Ultra is something that the Central Intelligence Agency—and specifically Bill Clinton as president—had to apologize to the American citizens for. It turns out the CIA was trying to use monarch MK Ultra mind control techniques on homeless people, drug addicts, and other people they found lying around that nobody wanted anymore. I found that incredibly strange.

At any rate, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that like, share, and subscribe. Leave a comment below, and I will return the favor. At any rate, I am out.

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