92 County Tour: Dearborn County

Our last county tour was in October, which is kind of embarrassing, but you know...knee replacements, holidays, really long vacation...who has time to tour counties? (If you're new here, Ryan and I are on a very slow quest to visit all 92 counties in the state of Indiana. We have most of them to go.)

So not surprising to most of you, I'm sure, Ryan likes to ski. (Although he thinks it's been about fifteen years since he's gone, so it's really super that the whole industry is not depending on him.) He's been wanting to go on a ski trip, but also not surprising to you, I'm not a ski enthusiast. At all. So we came up with what I feel was a really brilliant compromise. He planned a ski trip (taking along a buddy to ski with) to a county we had never visited, and we turned it into double duty. Ski trip + county tour = something for everyone!

So today I'll tell you the official county tour part and tomorrow we'll focus on the ski trip part. How's that?

Our county of choice this time was Dearborn County, in a section of the state we haven't really explored yet. It's in the southeastern portion of Indiana, right next to the Ohio River, making it close to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky. The county was named for Dr. Henry Dearborn, the U.S. Secretary of War in 1803 when the county formed. In its early days, its growth was centered around the railroad.

Obviously I knew I didn't have much time to plan superfluous activities on this tour since the main part was supposed to be focused on skiing. But I did find out that Dearborn County has a covered bridge, and I do so dearly love a covered bridge, so we went to see it! (Fortunately it was right on the way to the slopes, so it wasn't TOO hard.)

The Guilford Covered Bridge was originally built in 1879 by Archibald Kennedy and Sons (as is reflected in writing on the entrance to the bridge) and in the early 1900's they added some additional support beams to enable the bridge to handle heavy loads produced by the aforementioned railroad commerce. It does not stand on its original location (it's now part of a park, actually) and it was damaged by fire in 1993 and later restored. It is a really beautiful bridge on the inside. (I don't think I've ever said that sentence before!) Not surprisingly, the restoration work included a sprinkler system. :) Other than that, though, it had all the charm of an old covered bridge.

It appears you can still drive through it, but they had the gate leading up to it closed the day we were there. My guess is because the driving path leads down into the park and passes right by the river, it is closed off during icy weather. And this was certainly an icy weekend.

We were there between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning and the sun was just gorgeous on the snow and water...beautiful.

Now here's a story for you. You will just not even believe this. (Except this sounds exactly like something that would happen to the two of us, so maybe you will believe it.) As you know, part of our quest for our county tours is to savor some coffee at a local coffee shop. Not a chain shop. A nice, local Mom and Pop place.

I spent quite a while hunting for shops in this county, and I will say up front that it's possible I missed one that would have been a viable option. (Coffee shops, I've learned, don't always advertise well.) I found two that looked great, but they weren't open on the weekends, so they were out. And after much hunting, I found this really cool looking place called L.A. Sweets. It promised great coffee AND treats, and I had my heart so set on this visit SO SET. (You see where this is going, don't you?)

Saturday morning, when we got up at 5:00 to head out (it's a 2.5 hour drive for us) I checked their Facebook page for the address to put in the GPS and found the news.  Apparently they had posted it Monday, but because I work in advance, I already had everything planned before Monday ever arrived. They were MOVING. That very weekend. So they had closed Friday afternoon and wouldn't reopen until Monday. No coffee for the Shaffers on Saturday.

I'm sure I don't have to explain that finding out at 5 in the morning on a Saturday that my Saturday morning coffee plan just flew out the window didn't do much to cheer my soul. But I tried to remain upbeat, because even though it goes against everything our county dates stand for, we did have a saving grace:

Yep. We had to hit a chain. Fortunately, we don't have a Dunkin' Donuts around our town, so it really was different for us. The people were very friendly, the food was good, and, well, I never turn down a good donut.

 A little leftover Christmas cheer. Or a personalized cup for me. Could go either way.

We didn't linger long, because Ryan and his buddy Shawn were eager to get to the slopes. Like I said, I'll tell you more about that tomorrow, but here's a peek at their fun! (I took plenty of pictures to use a few now and still have a bunch for later.)

They went to Perfect North Slopes, which always throws us off, since it's south of us, but Perfect North is the name.

I would show you the lovely entrance sign, since I always pause for photos, but we had a string of traffic behind us when we pulled in (which I did not realize) and when Ryan kindly paused for me, the lady behind him went nuts and let's just say the gesture she gave me was not sign language for "Welcome to the slopes; could we be friends?" So we put away the camera and kept going. I did, however, take this consolation sign photo at the end of the night:

Though Indiana has had its fair share of snow (and ice) lately, Perfect North does manufacture snow, as I'm sure many slopes do. I'd never read about how they do that, so I found this link on their site. Interesting, if you'd like to know how resorts make snow!

Here are some of the views we had as we approached the slopes, before Miss Congeniality got to us.

(The dark objects on the left side are the snow groomers, as described in the link above.)

 I feared this might be the lodge, but thankfully it wasn't. HA!

Just so you know, I stayed in the actual lodge all day while Ryan and Shawn got their full eight hours out of their pass. So many stories to tell you tomorrow! Meanwhile,  couple of pictures to hold you over. :)

So there you go! Dearborn County Tour COMPLETE!

If you'd like to see all our county tours, visit this page and scroll to the bottom!

Linking up with Tamar!