It's podcast Tuesday, and our stories today go along with the blogaroo today and tomorrow. Enjoy stories and pictures at your leisure!
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!
