92 County Tour: St. Joseph

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This past weekend, we knocked another county off our tour list! We headed north, almost to Michigan, to St. Joseph County! This county (apparently just known as St. Joe County by those who live there) is named after the St. Joseph River, which runs through it. That cracked me up when I read it after we came home, because we saw that river multiple times and kept searching on our maps and GPS for its name, but couldn't find it. We even asked Siri! She didn't know either. Fail.

We were (as you can see from the above photo) not blessed with beautiful weather, but we're the Shaffers! We power through!

Here's a recap of our day. It took us about an hour and a half (maybe a little more) to get up there, and the first item on my visit list was the Shiojiri Niwa Garden in Mishawaka. I'd read about what a pretty garden it was, with its design a nod to a Shiojiri City in Japan, which has been a sister city to Mishwaka ever since some elementary school classes from the two cities exchanged letters back in the sixties.

Alas, when we arrived, the gate was closed.

Sooooo....no garden for us.

That was all I'd found to look at in Mishawaka, so we drove about 15 minutes over to South Bend, where we spent the rest of the day.

We started out at the South Bend Chocolate Company, because, well...do I even need to explain?

A locally-owned chocolate factory, this building houses not just the manufacturing of the chocolate, but also the shipping department, a little store, and a chocolate museum! As you can see, we wasted no time making ourselves at home:

They offer tours of the factory, and there are two kinds. For no charge, you can take a 20 minute tour that lets you go through the manufacturing and shipping areas and get a free sample. For $4.00, you can stay on the tour a little longer, try your hand at dipping a spoon, and take a guided tour of the museum. We did the paid version so we could get the full experience. Our guide was not overflowing with enthusiasm, but I don't think she was feeling well, and she really was nice, so we still enjoyed ourselves.

And our hairnets.

I mean, can you even IMAGINE having mixers like these in your home? No? Just me?

We got to see the rooms where they created the cream centers for the chocolates, the dipping lines, the sorting area, and we even got to sample the deliciousness!

The dipping was fun, too!

The museum paid tribute to ALL chocolate companies, not just this one. They have a huge collection of old chocolate boxes and tins, and even a box used by a vendor at a baseball stadium! They also have a map that shows all the chocolate manufacturers in the state of Indiana!

And yes, this would be Ryan next to a solid chocolate Santa.

It was fun to tour the factory and see how they do things, even though my hair began its slow decline after that hairnet adventure.

Next up? A drive through the campus of Notre Dame! Neither of us had ever been there before, and we were looking forward to seeing some of the landmarks the campus is known for.

The good news? The school was on its mid-term break, so campus was virtually empty, making a tour dreamy. The bad news? The gate-keeper told us you're not allowed to drive through the campus. I found this especially amusing since as he delivered that news, a car drove by us, right out of the campus. So yes, you are allowed to drive on campus, but apparently only if you have a permit, and we did not. Soooooooooooo out into the freezing cold rain we went, to explore campus on foot. It. Was. So. Frigid. I was trying to protect my camera from the rain by holding it under my coat. My hair was growing bigger by the minute. Not quite a lovely tour. And we would have loved to see even more of the campus, but it was just way too cold. I couldn't feel my feet by the time we got back to our car.

 My nearly perfect picture of the Main Building of the campus, with its famous golden dome. Had the rental truck not been parked in the doorway delivering something, it would have been perfect! Ha! We were too cold to come back later to see if it was gone. I read that this building was the third to be built on the campus - back in 1879.

 Next to that was the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which is apparently magnificent inside, but we didn't even try to see if it was open, given the aforementioned cold and the need to HURRY!!! Still - a beautiful building on the outside!

 A HUGE statue of Moses. (Apparently he is also known as First Down Moses.)

 The Clarke Memorial Fountain, built to honor the school's fallen war veterans, but often called Stonehenge for obvious reasons.

 The famous football stadium, under construction, and complete with portapotties. :)

This piece is called "Word of Life" and is on the side of the library. You might have heard it called Touchdown Jesus, because its visible from the football stadium and the position of the hands have led it to be known as that. But I read here that it is technically neither a mural nor a mosaic. It is made up of 6700 separate pieces of granite and stands 134 feet high and 68 feet wide.

Our tour of campus came to a cold conclusion here, and we got back in the car in search of some pieces of the stomping grounds from the first years of my parents' marriage. They lived in South Bend, where Mom worked at a restaurant, and Dad taught at Greene Township School. We never found the houses where they lived or the school (I was starting to get hungry and cut our hunt short) but we did find this tiniest of restaurants where Mom worked over 60 years ago. She said it was brand new when she worked there. It's now called The Boss's Place and is still open, but it had closed for the day before we arrived.

Our coffee shop for this county was very unique! I wanted to find something a little different and happened upon this little place called The Chicory Cafe. I chose it because it had a NOLA atmosphere and food, and Ryan loves a nod to New Orleans! He went on a mission trip there before we started dating, and I thought he would really enjoy a reminder of that part of his life.

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the inside because, similar to NOLA, he said, it was kind of chaotic in there. Very busy - even after 2 p.m. - but totally worth the wait for the food! It was our only meal for the day, so we ate well!

A mud turtle latte for me, which was delicious. Fresh brew and beignets for Ryan:

 You can kind of see behind him there the Mardi Gras style decor!

I got a turkey sub, and Ryan got a Po' Boy, and we split the best mac and cheese we've ever had at a restaurant. Truly delicious.

This technically completed our tour, and our final adventure of the day will be chronicled on the blog tomorrow, but I want to at least mention where we went, since it was part of the county and was such a great experience that I'd totally recommend seeing anything here if you can!

We went to a concert at the Morris Performing Arts Center, which is this STUNNING old theater with amazing architectural details! It was built back in 1922 and has quite a history, which you can read about on its site. I'll tell you more about our night there tomorrow! For now - enjoy a few pictures!

 

Not our prettiest weather day, but we had fun anyway!

17 down, 75 to go!

The Shafferland Shuffle

Well, we made it through one whole week of DST. Woot woot for us!!!! Anyone else been on the staying-awake struggle bus? Anyone? ANYONE?

Here's how we spent week one of time change!

* Last Sunday, we had leftover pizza for lunch and someone, who shall remain nameless, dumped a huge piece all down the front of himself. I laughed so hard, not at him, but just because he seriously never does anything like that and it was funny to watch him react! Later in the day, he took me to Starbucks and I went venti because, well, DST. By that night, I just wanted to bake cookies, but our kitchen looked like this, so no cookies.

* Monday was Mom's first day to come to outpatient physical therapy. She was just assessed, so it was a pretty easy appointment as far as "working out" went, but I think she really enjoyed getting out of the house. As of that day, she was just a day short of being 3 weeks post-op, so I thought she looked great! After work, I watched my friends' kiddos, and the next-to-the-littlest wanted to hold the littlest. Always an adventure. :) We came home, and Ryan worked on the cabinet project. Again. Still. Whatever.

* Tuesday was our one year house-iversary! Not of moving in, but just of purchasing. We celebrated by moving all the stuff back into the cabinets. LOL!! It was also Pi day, which in my mind makes it pie day. It "just so happened" that my mom had shared some pie with us, so we got to actually celebrate! And I welcomed back my restocked kitchen by making a Texas Sheet Cake for Ryan's work.

* Wednesday was Mom's first TRUE day of therapy and she got to work with Ryan! It was fun to watch him in action for a whole session. He's so good at what he does! After work, I met up with my friend Amber for a coffee date, and then I worked on chores at home while Ryan worked on the cabinet doors. (Are you seeing a theme here??)

* Thursday was my first speaking day for the spring season. I have several speaking dates lined up, and this one was a luncheon for a small group of women. They were kind, warm, and welcoming and I completely enjoyed meeting with them! Ryan had to work really late and then I'm sure it will shock you to know he came home and worked on the cabinets. :)

*Friday, I went to visit Ryan at work and he was wearing something very different from what he'd been wearing when he left home. Crack me up!!! We went on our "D" date Friday night. (If you missed the earlier memo, we went out of order and did the "E" date last weekend.) I'm not sure that St. Patrick's Day might be the best choice of nights to go out. Good thing we went early! Anyway. Can't wait to tell you all about our date!

 * Yesterday was full, full, full!! And I can't wait to tell you about it, too! Ryan had the day off, and we did a county tour AND an alphabetical date all in one day. We trekked north to St. Joseph County and had all kinds of fun despite the fact that it rained/sleeted most of the day. And at the end of the day, we enjoyed a very special surprise alphabetical date planned entirely by Ryan. Blew my socks off!

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!