Love Those Indiana Small Towns!

We had some errands to run in Goshen, IN today so off we went. Goshen is about 15 minutes from where we are currently staying. Goshen is a very pretty small town of about 34,000. The downtown is lovely. 

We stopped at a wonderful shoe store, called Woldruff's for Eldy to get some new slip ons. They had an amazing selection of some of the finest shoe brands. If you wanted to shop local and get a good shoe, this is the place to go. Eldy got a nice pair of Skechers slip ons. He absolutely loves them! Super cushy.

Right across the street is Jojo's Pretzels, one of the best known places that locals love, for freshly made pretzels. The whole store is Coke themed, so of course, Sparky LOVES that shop! (She drinks a Coke for breakfast every single morning, explains Eldo.) There are LOTS of wonderful small stores to shop local for clothing, shoes, a True Value hardware store right there, and several wonderful restaurants we hope to try. One is called Biebs & Ash, which gets great reviews and supposedly has a terrific burger.

We had sour cream and onion dusted pretzels with great lemonade. We sat outside at little tables provided by the shop and it was a gorgeous spring day, sunny with a little breeze. Goshen is a college town too, so it's great to see that students shop downtown here as well. There are several remarkable independent stores to shop at, such as Found, an antique store in historic Goshen. And of course, there are also several big, beautiful churches.

Downtown Goshen has some beautiful architecture in their building facades. Several of the buildings are dated in the 1800's. The brick building to the right is dated 1878.

love this facade!

They have multiple art installations all over the downtown area. Sparky loved this one, called "Raindance" by Sunday Mahaja. Here is a closeup of the head....So cool!

And a view from farther away.....

There was an alleyway full of art works--appropriately titled "Art Alley".

It had chalk art and panels displayed.

Just a wonderful small town vibe, clean and beautiful, and not to be missed if you are in the area....There are also several parks, two of the more notable ones are Fiddler Pond Park and Oxbow County Park, with some great walking trails. Don't forget to visit the Olympia Candy Kitchen store, too! An original candy counter dating back to 1912, a soda fountain and lots of sweet confections to choose from, make this a must top if you have a sweet tooth!

sculptures around town

                 We love visiting Goshen! Don't miss it!

On the Trail Again....

Well, if you are going to work out the Thanksgiving sludge, might as well do it on a bike. I get bored with walking on a smooth, straight path, so I'd rather ride my bike. There was some good football on today, so Eldy passed on the Pumpkinvine Trail. Besides, it was 42 degrees and that's too cold for him. Me, being a Chicago suburbs girl having grown up with lots of blizzards and lots of snow, cold doesn't bother me. I suppose it will one of these days, when I get too nervous about walking on icy sidewalks and streets and take a good fall. "Wait a minute," says Eldy. "You aren't going to have to worry about that 'cuz you'll be with me and we'll be where it's WARM in the winter!"  Yes, dear...but Eldy knows I might have to go find mountains somewhere so I can experience COLD and that white stuff....I'd really like to try snowshoeing! But first, PICKLEBALL! (see previous blog on that one)

Observation deck over marsh on trail

I suppose many people just hop on a bike out on a trail and think, "Man, it's really dreary now that all the leaves are gone, no color to be found...boring!" I used to be one of those people, but now I have so much more time to pay attention to everything around me. I just seem to notice a lot more, but some of that comes from wanting to take better photos and having fun with my camera. Yesterday I challenged myself to an "I Spy" type of observation.  I went looking for color....I saw green plants still growing, bright red berries on trees, large yellow berries on shrubs low to the ground, some kind of prickly vine that turns from a cherry red in late summer to a bright deep lavender in the fall, and some beautiful wheat colored ornamental grasses. Lots of people out on the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail walking Sunday, I passed at least 20 or more. I also saw a "big boys' fort", that's what it looked like to me. It was the biggest tree stand/blind I've ever seen, and it just looked like what a grown up little boy would call the ultimate fort. Made me a little nervous to see it, but don't think it's been used for awhile for hunting as the walls were starting to fall down. I rode a total of 11 miles yesterday...Good workout but I'm sure the sludge is still there!

The "Fort"

ornamental grasses at Abshire Park in Goshen, IN

Tomorrow is another day, and that's probably a good thing...there was much more stress to today but it will have to wait for tomorrow's blog...time to wind down...see you later....

We've got all the time in the world.....

Well, we were going to get an early start to Elkhart this morning, but things happen. Late yesterday we got a replacement set of parts for the central vac (which wasn't working right) only to discover that the fittings on the hose don't stay in the outlet. We had a tech come out to look at it, and he says something's not right...either there's a part missing on the hose connector or something is missing in the outlet to hold the hose in. And "if that's the way it's designed, they need to fire the engineer who designed this thing!" Yup! By the way, it's a Dirt Devil central vac system. We are going to be delayed....well, we have all the time in the world...we're  not on a schedule, we're not in any hurry...one thing about being retired, you learn patience if you didn't have it before. You learn to sit and relax, you learn to sit and do nothing for a little while (something VERY hard for me to do)...you learn to smell the roses, as they say....and that's a very good thing. I am sitting here typing the blog, looking out at some purple fall asters, listening to the birds talk to each other, and watching them fly around in front of the window. Not the prettiest landscape, as Hardings Grocery Store is peeking thru the trees on the other side of me, but there is a nice grassy area to the side of the General parking lot with some beautiful conifers nearby and we are right there by the trees....After quite some time, we found out that they weren't able to provide us with the correct hoses for the vac system, they are going to "research" and order something else so off we went on our way....

Waitin' on the women

We arrived at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in mid afternoon, and after we got settled, we drove to Shipshewanna to get some pretzels at JoJo's and visit my favorite quilting fabric store, Lolly's. The town was VERY crowded..there was a fall craft show going on. We did not look at the crafter's wares as they were starting to close down for the day, but we did manage to explore the beautfully crafted Amish style Davis Mercantile in downtown "Ship-See", a nickname for Shipshewanna.

The Davis Mercantile caters to the gentlemen as well as to the ladies, as you can see from their front porch--plenty of rockers for the guys while they wait for their women to shop! There are many many other wonderful stores in town to explore, from antique shops to the flea market, to antique toy stores, to cheese and meat shops, to garden whirligig and what-not stores. You see lots of Amish culture, wares, and many of the Amish and Mennonites work the local restaurants and businesses. It's a common thing to see the horses hooked up to hitchin' posts right next to the cars in town. We really enjoyed Shipshewanna today. It was 84 degrees and beautiful sunny skies. A great way to spend a Saturday......

A beautiful store inside the Mercantile

Making pretzels at JoJo's

PS.Had a terrible time today with the design of the blog...sorry for any glitches in print size or placement of photos. The computer seemed to have a mind of its own today!  I work on a mac and it comes out very different in the published blog than it looks in the draft. I shudder to think what it might look like on a PC! I think I'm going to have to learn HTML to fix this stuff! Thanks for bearing with us!  Jeannie and Eldy