Shipshewana

Today was a good day out looking around and seeing the country - first we rode around town before we headed over to South Bend - the farms of the Amish are lovely - very well kept and you would be surprised the size of the farms - most are very large. However, there is NO electricity in the homes. They do have natural gas (probably used for cooking) and fireplaces. Beautiful horses that are very well taken care of. I was surprised that the Amish do not just live in the Shipshewana area but up in Goshen and Elkhart as well. I'm sure that we will see some more in the Pennsylvania area.

Then we traveled over to South Bend to the Notre Dame campus.

Of course, for those of you that don't know, this is "touchdown Jesus" on the campus of Notre Dame. I didn't know how this mural became know as "touchdown Jesus" before - but the story goes that the students started calling this mural, which is on the side of a library, "touchdown Jesus" because His arms are raised as a ref would raise his arms to signal a touchdown and it is visible from the stadium. It is really pretty cool in person - the picture really doesn't show it very well.

Of course, this is the practice field on campus - but the team was not practicing while we were there - people were setting up a whole lot of tents getting ready for the home game on Saturday.

This is the stadium.

And another shot of the stadium - can you tell that I am a football fan??? I wore my Notre Dame cap today and everywhere I went I heard "Like your cap". It was neat being able to wear my cap in an area where it would be appreciated - just as a side note, for those of you that may not know me, No I did not graduate from Notre Dame - I went to Florida Southern College for my undergrad degree and University of South Florida for my Master's degree.

Anyway, this is a beautiful campus. We did not see too much - as it is a pedestrian campus and Dan is not a walker per se (plus it was pretty cool weather wise). However, the parts of the campus we saw were lovely.

We also went to Goshen and Elkhart - Dan wanted to go to the Keystone factory - which we were finally able to find (after going to Elkhart TWICE). Anyway, we were able to go to the factory and talk to some people, which made Dan happy. BUT a trip that was only suppose to take about two hours took ALL day! So we were not able to do as much in Shipshewana as I wanted to.

I did not take pictures of the Amish themselves, as I have read that they do not like to have their picture taken, but I did take a couple of pictures of the buggies they drive.

This is by the Bulk food store that we went into - we actually bought a couple of things (like homemade wheat bread and wheat noodles). When we went out of the store Dan asked some ladies if we could look inside the buggy - which they were very polite and let us - they are all different -some fancier than others (just like cars are all different). The horses are absolutely beautiful and you can tell that they are very well taken care of. As you can see in this picture, one of the buggies even had a little cart behind it.

We went to the Blue Gate Restaurant again for dinner tonight - we even had the same waitress (who was a wonderful waitress). Last night we had fried chicken but tonight we had bar-b-que pork ribs with a baked potato and Amish baked beans. It was excellent. Dan also had a piece of Old Fashion Cream Pie - which is brown sugar, cream, vanilla - and it was very good also (I had a couple of bites). I brought home an apple dumpling which I will eat later. We did not do any real shopping - we did walk into a store and look around - didn't buy anything though. We did go to the bakery at the Blue Gate and bought a couple of nut rolls for breakfast in the morning and some white chocolate pretzels (I love white chocolate pretzels NOT yogurt covered pretzels). We also bought a book about the Amish - to answer a few of our own questions.

Tomorrow we will leave here and start going toward Pennsylvania - I guess we will probably get there on Saturday or Sunday - we are not going to be in a big hurry. It is raining tonight and pretty cool - I don't know what the weather is suppose to be tomorrow - we weren't here to hear the news, but I'm sure we'll be able to handle it.

I have really enjoyed our stay here in Shipshewana and I would enjoy coming back at some time and do a little more looking around - like in some of the quilt shops. The people that we have talked to have been very friendly, but we have found out that they (the Amish people) also speak Pennsylvania Dutch as well as English. From what we have read that helps them stay separated from the "outside" world. There are many conflicting ideas - such as them being so friendly but also staying separated from us on the outside - That they don't own vehicles but are allowed to ride in cars (our waitress comes to work in a van that the restaurant sends to pick the girls up because it would take her over an hour with a horse and buggy - plus that is not good for the horses to be on the road that long). Oh, I forgot - on the road the buggies have their own lane right beside the lanes that the cars use. And the sound that the horses make as they trot down the road is just unmistakable - it will be a sound that I will remember for a long time.

Well, I guess I will close for tonight - thanks for the recommendation to come here - I'm glad we did. If you have any questions, please let me know - thanks for the comments last night - it's good to hear from you - please keep them coming!

Until then - talk to you tomorrow!