The Heat is Gone, and Not a Minute too Soon – July 21, 2015

When we arrived in Lakeville it was a balmy 84 degrees.  What a difference from Nashville with 107 degree heat index!  Today the temperature is not supposed to get any higher than 78 degrees and I am looking forward to it!

The plan is to explore the neighboring Amish towns, and that we did.  Goshen, Indiana was delightful even though its relatively small with a population of 30,000 or so, its city leadership seems to really care about the city.

The downtown is still very alive with old shops and businesses that have been here for years and some new things to attract tourists like us.  Look what they did on a few corners to provide shaded seating.  Behind that wall is a rock fountain that makes this a great place to sit and think or read.

Just up the street is the courthouse which is still active and the county seat decked out with beautiful flowers.  All around this county, there are small flower gardens depicting quilts and one of them sits right in front of the courthouse.

On the corner, is a police station erected long ago to protect the police from gangsters!

We stopped for lunch at Kelly Jae’s Cafe.  For our foodie fans, here is a picture and description.

I had the Jae’s Salad with field greens, asian pears,spiced pecans and chicken with balsamic vingaigrette dressing (hold the blue cheese, please).  Jim had Pesto Chicken sandwich which was grilled chicken breast, pesto mayonnaise, Manchego cheese on a ciabatta roll.  Both were delicious.

After lunch we drove a short distance to the Old Bag Factory.  This was built in 1896 to house a factory that made….wait for it….bags.  You know those cloth bags that most bulk commodities came in.  In 1984 it was reopened with restaurants, shops of all kinds and historic artifacts saved from the era of the factory’s heyday.  Also the site of another Garden Quilt.

By accident we noticed our favorite soft pretzel maker had a location in Goshen and that was our next stop.  A few years ago, at the Plant City Strawberry Festival we stopped at Ben’s Soft Pretzel stand on the way into the festival.  Best ever soft pretzels!  They are from this area so when we saw they had a location nearby, well the rest is calories.  I even had to have a bite of Jim’s pretzel it smelled so good.

Time to move on to Shipshewana, the birthplace of our RV.  On the way, there were huge fields of corn and soybeans in perfect rows.  This was one of the best but unfortunately the camera just can’t capture the vastness of some things the eyes can behold.

When we got to Wana, as the locals call it, it was much different than we remembered.  In 2013 we arrived on a Sunday afternoon in April and there were no cars or people on the roads.  This time it was PACKED with cars and people and it wasn’t long before we found out that every Tuesday and Wednesday from May to October is an enormous Farmers Market.

Our first stop was Rise N Roll Bakery where Jim remembers buying some Crinkle Chocolate cookies and had to repeat the experience.

Then downtown to the shopping area of local artists.  I don’t know if you have noticed, but at our front door there is a sign painted on slate tile.  We bought that here from a local artist, Kathy McHenry and went back for another look around.

Besides all the people, busloads of them, the streets were filled with beautiful flowers in planters and hanging baskets.

We left Wana liking the sleeping little Amish community more than this thriving tourist area but fully understand everybody needs to make a living.