Day three in Brown County

I had the best time on our last day in Brown County, which was Friday. 

For one, I felt great! 

For two, the weather was absolutely perfect the entire time we were there. 

So here is day three, our last full day.  We always leave on Saturday morning.

This is the lane that leads up to the Christmas Shop.

 Those flowers are cockscomb.  They have these cute little small variety, and a much bigger variety.
They are annuals and they sell the seeds in the store.

I enjoy walking the lane.

Believe me, My Shug did not think it was manly to get his picture taken with the Polar Bear, but he humored me!  And there wasn't anyone else around!

 They have a somewhat new historic museum.  It's been there three or four years.  And they have this reproduction school.  We looked inside the school, but not the museum.

 We checked on the bear.....almost finished!

 In Nashville, Indiana in the fall, the weekends are VERY CROWDED AND THE STORES ARE BUSY!  I can't stress that enough.  And it was Friday.  So, we ate lunch and took off for the country side again.  We decided to go to some artists studios.  My Shug wanted to go to this one in particular. Her name is Sidney Bolam and she is a stone carver.  This is her home and where she had stuff displayed for the artist studio tour.  This is not her studio.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that area.

 This is Sidney, graciously letting me take her picture with the carving we bought.  She didn't want me to take her picture because she had been working and was covered in dust.  I told her no one would care

 These are some of the roads to the studios.  Actually, this is what most of the roads look like.  One lane, some are paved, but many are gravel, and beautiful!

 We also went to a fiber artist studio,

 we stopped at a very small general store in Helmsburg.  Guess what else is in Helmsburg!

Nothing! 

I'm serious!

Absolutely NOTHING!

This road was actually wide enough for two cars! 

 We went to the Brown County winery, and did a little tasting.

 And after that we went to Bear Wallow Distillery.  Thing is...I'm not so into whiskey or Moonshine.  We had a little lesson on the difference between the two.  If I remember correctly, Moonshine is whiskey with flavoring added.  But when it came time to taste, we passed.

 We still had a little time before dark.  You really don't want to be in these hills and hollers much after dark unless you know your way around.  

I loved this studio.  It is a weaving studio,

 and as with most of the studios, their home is at the studio.

 This little studio was down the lane from the weaving studio.  She does relief prints and letterpress.  I talked to her for awhile and she said her parents talked her into opening her studio for the studio tour, for the month of October, so she took a month off of work to prepare, and opened her studio.  She said it changed her life. She loves it so much she is going to do some markets and start her own business.

She also lives in this little cabin.  And I mean little....one room.  And I know all about living in one room!  I didn't even see a kitchen, but her parents live in the weaving studio up the hill.

 At this point it was around 6:00.  We went back to the gas station (teehee) got some broasted chicken and potato wedges and took it to an overlook for a picnic!

 Where we ate...

 Now here's the thing...we usually stay in the state park, in a cabin.  But this year, we decided to stay in the town of Nashville.  And the stores in Nashville close around 5:00 or 6:00.  BUT when we were heading back to our hotel, we discovered the stores were open!

 Apparently on Friday evenings they stay open later.  And that might be only in the fall, I don't know.  All these years I've never known the stores to stay open later.

 Apparently other people don't know they stay open later either because the streets were almost empty, so I told Shug to "let me out" and  "park the car!!!"

because I need some chocolate covered peanuts!!! (dessert!)

 And I decided to do some more shopping since it wasn't crowded.  And no worries ladies...

there are plenty of benches for male bonding outside the stores!

 I will leave you with pictures of the stores in Nashville, in the evening.

Saturday morning we went to one last store,

I went to The Daily Grind and got a latte', and we headed for home.

  Just in time as the Vice President's son was having a wedding celebration in the state park and the traffic was bumper to bumper!

Have a great weekend!
Cindy

PS - Cross your fingers....three days with no head weirdness!

Brown County - Day 2

On day two we did some shopping in the morning, had lunch, then

went to check on the bear, which had a huge crack down the front that I never noticed the day before.  I suppose that could represent honey dripping from his mouth!

Then we took off in the countryside.  I wanted to go to this very huge, fun garden center that we discovered a few years ago.

And of course, we had to detour and drive through the covered bridge in Bean Blossom.

And we found this cross again.  It's been there a few years.

We've nailed a few prayers to it in the past.  And as we drove by, we decided to turn around,

go back, and nail a few prayers to it again.  For my obvious health reasons, and a couple of family members that could use a prayer too.

The next day I FELT GREAT!  Maybe "someone" is listening to me!

And here is the garden center.  It is also a tea room.

They have several out buildings.

We bought a holly bush and a bronze fennel plant.

I went inside to use the restroom, and they sent me upstairs.  There are several rooms of stuff for sale and all these years I never knew it!

I thought these roosters were cute,

and this wreath,

and these chickens.

And I loved the detail on this fireplace.

There is a grinding stone stuck into the outside of it.

And check out this hollowed out area.  I imagine a statue used to be inside it.  It kind of reminded me of Italy.  They have areas like this all over their buildings with Mother Mary tucked inside.

Another place we went, which turned out really sad is a place called Stone head.  If you click here and go to the bottom picture of the post, you can see what it's supposed to look like.  Apparently, some one vandalized it last year, and took the head.  It's been there since 1851.  All of those years.....

So a stone carver made a memorial to it.

This house sits in front of it and one year we went on a garden tour at this house.  The sign says "The Spirit of Stone Head lives!   Stone Head was a road marker back in the 1850's.

We drove along more of the country side and found this big guy!  I named him Hoss!

He was right outside of Story, Indiana.

I wanted to go back to see the garden they had there.

They kind of let it go.

Beyond the garden was this big barn.  And we noticed it was open with lights on.

So we walked out and peeked in.  We found out later they were going to be setting up for a wedding.

And that's it for Story!

The restaurant, bar, and lodging are all in the same building!

Don't blink or you'll miss it!

So we headed back to Nashville.

There's Hoss again!  He's like..."why you keep taking my picture?"

We got back to Nashville and My Shug took me to some fine dining!

Yep...that be a gas station and we are sitting outside on a curb-like structure waiting on a pizza.

As we waited I thought we should take a little walk.  We found this garage that the people must have just decided to paint!

On the other side of the garage is an antique store.  I thought the way they used the headboards was clever.

We took the pizza back to our room, opened a bottle of wine, and had a great evening.

Cindy