Overnight trip to Brown County

After we left the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, we headed to Little Nashville, Brown County, Indiana.  The trip was so-so.  I think there was so many little "bad" things about it that made it not that fun.

Like:

We didn't realize there was a time difference so we missed lunch at The Farmhouse Cafe & Tea Room, so we had to kill some time until dinner :(  Not a biggie, we went to one of the covered bridges and then headed back for dinner.  Our salads, rolls, and the chips and spinach/artichoke dip were yummy, however our main entrees were just so-so.  Then when we went to pay, they complained that we paid with $100 and having to find change.  Shawn didn't like that at all.

While we waited for the Farmhouse Cafe to open back up for dinner, we went to visit this covered bridge in Bean Blossom.

After dinner we drove back into Nashville to do some shopping in the stores, only almost all the stores there close up shop at 5.  Another disappointment :(  We did find Miller's Homemade Ice Cream Shop open and got some sweet treats.  Shawn had a the Oreo cookie sundae and I had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of caramel praline in a cup.  After eating that, we stopped to get my smashed penny from their penny machine :)  I'm always excited to find a penny machine.

Since it was still early, and there isn't much to do in this town after everything closes at 5, we drove out to the Brown County State Park to find the second covered bridge.  It was at the opening to the park and had a lot of traffic going over it.

We decided to hunt for a couple of Geocaches in the area.  We ended up only finding one and that turdbutt Shawn found it first!

After that we headed to our hotel.  I had read some great reviews on it on Trip Advisor and the price was fairly cheap, so we ended up staying at the Orchard Hill Inn.  It's a small mom and pop motel that was super clean, and super cute!  Shawn was disappointed that he didn't bring a fishing pole with him cause there was a nice lake out in the back of the property.

Neither one of us slept very well that night.  The bed was comfortable, I just wasn't sleepy. I think it was because I didn't have my pillow and we didn't have a fan on. In fact, I was up all night tossing and turning and playing on the computer thus keeping Shawn up too.  When I booked our hotel room, it came with the option of purchasing a breakfast buffet at the Artist Colony Inn for $4 each, so I bought us those.  The breakfast buffet was from 7:30-10:30.  Even though our checkout time wasn't until 12 noon, I had Shawn set us an alarm to get up around 7:30.  I figured that would give us plenty of time to get up, get ready, and get the car loaded and then drive to breakfast before the buffet closed.  Since neither one of us could sleep the night before, we were up, ready and had the car loaded by about 7:30 and we headed to breakfast.  The buffet wasn't that good so I'm glad we only paid $4 for it.  Another little disappointment :(  Oh yeah, and it was raining....disappointment.  It wasn't raining a lot, but enough to need an umbrella. 

Before we left the restaurant, I had asked them what time stores opened up.  The lady told me they started opening up around 10:30.  10:30??  Are you kidding me??  On a Saturday??  Great!  Now we have like almost 2 hours to kill on a rainy Saturday in a town with nothing to do.  So I thought well ...I guess we'll just drive around.  Shawn's on his work phone, so this is aggravating me too.  I ended up needing to go to the bathroom really bad, and there isn't many places to go potty in the town with closed shops, so I thought well, we still have the key code and technically didn't need to be out of our motel until noon, so we headed back to the motel for a little bit.  After that I though, well we can drive through the park and check it out.  When pulling in, they had a sign that the cost to enter was $5 residents and $7.50 non-residents.  I thought to myself, great, Shawn's going to complain about the $7.50.  When we got up to the gate the man said $5.  I thought sweet, he's giving us a deal.  Then he said, you are from Indiana right?  I thought, oh yeah, we are still in Indiana.  I'm so used to traveling south for trips that we are never the "resident-price" for anything.  LOL!! 

The park was nice, what we saw of it.  Between the rain, the slippery, curvy, steep hills you had to drive in on the wet road, coupled with the having to wait for the runners to cross the road for some race that was going on, the lack of sleep we both had, the fact that I started my period that morning and was already grouchy, and the hour we had to kill, we were both DONE with this place and ready to go home.  We were arguing non stop about whether we should stay and wait for the stores to open up and shop since that was one the main reason for coming, or just go home.  When looking at the park map, there was a quick exit to the park coming up so I said fine, we'll just leave.  Shawn said, well that's your decision, not mine.  He knew he wasn't getting the blame if we left.  LOL!  But I knew if we left, I would be upset that we didn't stay and shop.  So when we got to the exit and I ended up driving back into town to shop instead of going home.   

Driving through the park definitely reminded me of the Smoky Mountains (which we will be going to this fall...can't wait!).  In fact, the little roadside sign up above talked about how Nashville is referred to as the "Little Smokies".

After we left the park, we ended up going back into town shopping.  We found a parking spot on the street at the beginning of the shopping area and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around going in and out of the stores shopping and sampling food.  We didn't buy much - I got a little wiener dog pen and a new pineapple garden flag.  We bought some puffed caramel corn and Shawn got a dipped pretzel and a jumbo chocolate peanut butter cup.  There was LOTS of stuff I would of loved to have gotten, but thought I would keep it simple.

After we were finished shopping and ready to go, we got in the car and headed for home.  We stopped at the Story Inn in Story, Indiana for a late lunch.  I had seen people post pictures before from there and the front of the building looks old and run down.  I wanted to take some pictures there.  We got there a little later and lunch was going to be over soon so Shawn said, let's go eat and then you can take some pics.  I thought OK.  When we went inside, there restaurant was pretty empty.  We were seated at a little two-top table near a pole in the middle of the restaurant.  There was another empty two-top on the other side of the pole.  After we ordered, I went to the bathroom.  When I came back, I found another couple seated at the other table.  Are you kidding me?  The entire restaurant is empty and you sit people practically at our table.  Disappointment!  This aggravated me for some reason. 

Our lunch was good.  Shawn had the club sandwich with chips, and I had the hot ham and cheese sandwich with homemade fries and cole slaw.

Well our luck, after we were done eating and ready to leave, there was a huge wedding party congregating on the steps, so no fun pics for the building for me.  Another little disappointment :(

The drive home definitely seemed to take forever!  And the majority of it was on little two-lane winding roads, which wasn't good for someone who was running on lack of sleep, didn't feel good from being on my period, and was having right knee cramps from driving.  And the fact that Shawn was oblivious to the fact that I wanted him to drive didn't help.  All I wanted to do was get that car on the interstate, set the cruise, and stretch my leg!  However we were miles and miles and miles away from an interstate!  At one point, we stopped at a gas station to refuel ourselves so I could wake up and try and figure out how we could get to the interstate sooner.  We had the GPS on, the GPS on our phones on, and I had the big old school road atlas out trying to figure it out.  We were a sad mess. 

We finally made it home though.  Overall Brown County was an OK trip.  I doubt we'll ever go back though.  And if by chance we did, it would have to be in the fall so I could see the amazing color that it would have to offer out on all those back roads.  The one thing I did enjoy on the trip was taking lots of amazing pictures. 



Even though it doesn't look big in the picture below, that hosta was HUGE!

And of course my driver's side door survival kit....phone of course, chocolate, pen for signing the geocache logs, camera cap from the camera, and a dollar cause you never know when you are gonna need a quick soda fix!