92 County Tour: LaPorte County

Do you have it in you to see one more county this week? It was the third and final county from our little weekend getaway, and it also marked off the last of the "top row" counties in the state! We've seen all of them that sit on the northern border.

I presumed the county got its name because the neighboring counties were Lake and Porter. It had to be a mash-up of their names, right? Well if you can believe what you read on Wikipedia (or the internet in general) the name is French for "the door" or "the port." Apparently back in the day (like the 1800's) some French travelers discovered an opening in the forests that provided a doorway to land even further west. Who knew? Wikipedia knew!

By the way, that doorway is reeeeeeeeeeeeally wide now. The forests have long been cleared!

We visited LaPorte County for the first time Saturday evening (after all the dune hiking and such) when we went to visit my friend from college and her family. I'd told her we were coming in case she wanted to get coffee or something, but she just opened up her home and prepared a nice home-cooked meal! We had a wonderful time with them. (I would post a picture but I didn't ask permission, so I better not.)

Sunday morning, we drove to Michigan City to see the Washington Park Beach and the cute lighthouse. You know I'm a sucker for a lighthouse! We got there early enough that the place was still fairly deserted, and it was so calm and lovely.

 There was a marina right beside the lighthouse area, and boats were beginning to set sail for the day. A beautiful day to be on the water!

They also had a miniature "dune" between the marina and the boardwalk, so we walked that, and it was fun!

After we walked around there for a while, we drove over to an outlet mall nearby. We wanted to look for deals!

Know the main deal we found?

Yes. We went to an outlet mall and split a pretzel. LOL!!!

Monday morning, before we left to come home, we went back to LaPorte to get our coffee shop visit in! Based upon recommendations and research, I had carefully selected the KarMel Coffee House. It looked like it would be the PERFECT place for us.

It was going to take us about a half hour to get from the hotel to the coffee house, so we packed up the car, checked out of the hotel, and drove to LaPorte.

Made a wrong turn.

Ended up here.

 3/4 of a mile later, back here:

And shortly thereafter, we landed right in a front row parking spot at KarMel. FRONT ROW!

Here's why:

In case you can't read that, it says, "Sorry. We will be closed from Wednesday September 27th-October 8th. See you back here on Monday, October 9th." That was a whole week away! Our thoughts on that:

Fortunately I had a second recommendation for a coffee shop, and double fortunately, it was about a half mile away.

Rocky Mountain Cafe! Per a photo I saw hanging on the wall, the building used to be a filling station, but it has been transformed into a lodge-looking coffee shop. So cool!!!

Then:

Now:

(I blocked out those ladies' faces - they were in a 100 mile an hour conversation the entire time we were there!)

It was so cute inside - all lodgey looking!

Ryan got fresh brew and some delicious snack/dessert looking thing. I got a peanut butter/chocolate frappe that goes down in history as the most innovative and scrumptious frappe I think I've ever had!

This day happened to be our 58th monthiversary, too, so it was a really fun way to celebrate the day!

Thanks, LaPorte County! You were fun!