92 County Tour: Boone County

This past Saturday, Ryan and I toured our 16th county out of the 92 in our fine state! As you saw yesterday, the weather in Indiana was erratic at best throughout the week, so I tried to choose a county that didn't have a ton of outdoor fun, because I like to save those for good weather weeks. As it turned out, we had a warm and stunning day. Go figure! LOL!

We chose Boone County, which is about an hour south of us, and outside of going to visit a model home there a couple of years ago, I'm not sure either of us had been to Boone County before. This county is named for frontiersman Daniel Boone, but it's not entirely a frontier of things to do. we had fun, but there wasn't enough for a whole day of activity.

First, our picture...which we almost forgot to take and had to swing around in front of a city park to grab it. Please overlook the backdrop. LOL!

This is the first time we've gone to a county and haven't hit a true coffee shop. In my research, I could actually only find one coffee shop in the entire county, which is really sad in and of itself. The shop was also part of a balloon shop, and it closed at NOON on Saturdays. Equally sad! We had a donut shop we wanted to visit and it was just going to be too much sugar to do a coffee shop and a donut shop in the same hour. So we deferred to the donuts and never got to try anything from Balloon World and Coffee House.

We arrived in the county seat of Lebanon about 10:15 in the morning and went straight to Titus Bakery to have our breakfast.

Isn't this the COOLEST mural on a building?!?!?

When we arrived, the line was out the door, and we probably waited a good 20-25 minutes to order our donuts. Obviously a well loved shop! It's a third generation family owned business, and while the wait was long, the food was worth it. DELICIOUS donuts. (And HUGE! And not overpriced!) My only sadness with the whole process was that when I got to the front to order, I felt like I had to hurry, because the line behind me was still out the door, and because they had three people taking orders across the front of the donut display case, it was hard to see the full scope of what they had to offer. Since we were new, we didn't know what we wanted, and it was hard to see it all. But I am positive you cannot get anything BAD there, so our choices were excellent.

We got fresh brew to make it as close to a coffee shop experience as we could, and had a great morning just sitting in the shop, enjoying our breakfast! (And consequently, we were too full to eat anything else in the county the entire day. We had planned to have lunch there too, but there was no way we could possibly think of eating any more!)

Anyway. Totally worth the wait, and if you're an Indiana person reading this, and Westfield is closer to you than Lebanon, there's a location there as well!

I'd read online that also in Lebanon, we could find a little establishment called Bekah's Westside Cafe. HOW COOL IS THAT!?!? Even though eating was clearly out (see above), I wanted my picture taken with the sign, so we drove over there for that. (It was kind of on a main street, so I wanted to just get the picture and get out. I hate being stared at!)

I wanted to get a picture of the courthouse, too, because I'd read online that the dome is the second largest in size in the whole state. It really was a huge courthouse, and one of the nicer pieces of architecture in Lebanon, we thought.

There was another building mentioned as having quite a history, so we went to see it as well. It's an old milk factory that has been transformed into a theater (drama theater, not big screen theater). There's still an old smokestack outside the building that bears the word "milk" on it. (Apparently it used to be taller and say Wilson's Milk, but now it just has the lower section that says Milk.) Cool building, and I love that they continue to use it!

Before we left town, we made one last stop at Tru-Finds Treasures, which was a fun little antique/repurposed treasure store.

(Ryan thought Braeya would really enjoy taking a ride in that little Ferris Wheel. Clearly he has never actually met her.)

We left Lebanon and went to the other main city in the county: Zionsville. It is a darling little town. Its main street was completely quaint and full of little shops. Kind of reminded me of downtown Nashville (Indiana) on a smaller scale. And by the time we got to Zionsville, the day had blossomed into completely sunny and warm, so we just walked all around the town, seeing the little stores. I was especially taken with the bookstore, where they sold old (really expensive!!!) copies of books and featured local authors and even had a dog that lived right there in the store. It was my happy place.

This old church is also for sale. Oh my word. How darling is this!?!?!!?!

We found a nature trail that circled a park, so we took a walk on that, and it was just amazing to us that we could be out taking  walk without coats in the middle of February!

We left mid-afternoon to come back home (where we proceeded to go on another long walk, just because we could!) - but we had a fun time in Boone County. Sixteen down, seventy-six to go!