92 County Tour: Elkhart County

This weekend we continued our 92 county tour! If you're new here and have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the quick recap! In 2014, we began visiting the counties in our fine state, just as a fun little project. Our goal is to find something fun to do in every county and most importantly, to find a coffee shop in every county! It's a slow project, since we can mostly only go on the weekends, and Ryan works so many of those that our opportunities are limited. (Our whole list of counties visited so far can be found at the bottom of this page.)

Saturday we spent the day in Elkhart County, which is about a two hour drive from our house. (It borders Michigan on the north, so it's about as far up as you can go!) If you can believe what you read on the internet, it appears there are several theories about where the county got its name, but the most commonly believed one is that it was named for a Native American Chief.

The county has a couple of claims to fame. One is a large Amish and Mennonite population (though we only saw one buggy the whole day!) and the other is the RV industry. Actually back in 2008, when the economy crashed, this area of the state was particularly financially devastated, because no one really bought RVs in that season. We learned this weekend that it's booming once again, so that is exciting to hear!

And actually, the RV industry was our first draw for the day! We went to The Goshen RV Supercenter to have fun looking for a someday home. (If our work ever became travel-heavy, we think it would be fun to sell our house and live full time in an RV.) Wanna see some of our adventures there? (And the RV we fell in love with?)

Wouldn't this be the most perfect Shafferland Mobile 1.0?

 Ready to hit the road!

 Relaxin' in my seat.

 YOU GUYS!!! IT HAD A SCREEN DOOR!!!

 He liked the driver's seat.

 And the couch.

I could write a whole post JUST ON THIS RV, but I won't bore you with it. We met the nicest sales guy while we were there. He was understanding of our just-looking status and answered a ton of questions for us. We really appreciated him!

After we left there (and had a brief stop at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore), we drove into the downtown Goshen area and had lunch at a place called the South Side Soda Shop. It was featured by Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, so I knew Ryan would have fun trying it!

(Sorry for the power lines in the pictures. I didn't want to get up close for the picture and make the people eating feel like they had a paparazzi stalker!)

 Ready for the adventure!

 Our waitress was REALLY good. She recommended this Philly Cheese Steak sandwich for Ryan, and he said it was extra amazing. (The owner is apparently from Philly and the food is authentic!) Of course she told Ryan the sandwich was about half the size it actually was, so he really had to power through to eat the whole thing.

This place is also famous for pies, but we had NO ROOM for any. So sad.

We walked off our lunch in downtown Goshen, which is full of art pieces, old architecture, and a lot of character!

My friend Adela lives in this general area and recommended the Electric Brew for a coffee shop, so we went there! The atmosphere was cute, the coffee was really good, but the shop was soooooo hot! I don't know if their air was just broken for the day or if it's always like that, but it made it hard for Ryan to finish his fresh brew. (I got iced coffee, so I was okay.) But it really was a darling shop!

When we left Goshen, we went to the neighboring city of Elkhart to look around. We saw that they had a downtown riverwalk, but it didn't go quite as we had planned. It started at a botanical garden, but they were having a wedding when we got there, and I felt awkward trying to enjoy the gardens while trying to avoid wedding parties. So we left without touring that.

We walked down their riverwalk, which was beautiful, and we found a firefighter competition taking place, so we stopped to watch for a while. (Fun fact: Ryan wanted to work for the fire department back in the day!)

We also found a muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch larger than life statue of the American Gothic couple. The suitcase is about the right size for me, though!

We kept walking through town and found this really cool store with booths and reclaimed furniture/antiques/etc. I cannot even tell you how hard it was to come home without this amazing desk. Seriously.

For our dinner, we found this little walk-up ice cream shop and got waffle cones. Delish!

Thanks, Elkhart County, for a fun day and many exciting things to see! We enjoyed our visit to see you! :)