Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Quilts, Flowers and Buggies in Goshen, Indiana

The next day, we met up with Kathy and David at lunch.  Their 5th wheel was being repaired at the Montana main plant in Goshen.  They were able to stay in the coach the first night, but after the Montana repairman got working on their coach and had the front shell off, they needed to find a place to stay for one night, so..... They became our first guests in our motorhome. 
Early in the morning Bob and Kathy went birding.  When they returned we decided to go take a tour of the Indiana Amish country.  The fairground had a self driving tour, known at the Heritage Trail, through Goshen and Elkhart Indiana highlighting the Amish area.  We started out early taking the Heritage Trail that was a winding loops along rural highways, down quiet country lanes, through friendly cities and along small town main streets.  The scenic route lead us to many of the region's most popular restaurants, shops, inns and attractions.  We stopped at the Elkhart County Visitor Center to get information about the Quilt Gardens Tour.  In their offices they had some beautiful quilts.
    



I wished my friend Shellie could have been with us.  I appreciated these quilts but she is a very talented quilter and she would have loved these and understood what it took to make these pieces of art. The talking people, I loved. It is like me and any of my girl friends. 

We headed out of the Visitor's Center and went to the Wellfield Botanic Gardens, which was conceived as a community project in 2002.  The Elkhart Rotary Club had an idea of creating a public garden to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rotary International. This park became a reality in the spring of 2003. Beautiful park run completely by volunteers and on donations.


We next headed towards Linton's Enchanted Garden. This was a lovely garden center that had beautiful plants and many unique gifts.  It had a Kid's Center and a Petting Zoo.
 

By now it was lunchtime.  We decided that there was no better place to eat then in Amish Country. So on we traveled to Middlebury, Indiana and had lunch at Das Dutchman.  We ate family style having chicken, mashed potatoes and corn plus pie for dessert. There were other things too like homemade bread, but all I can remember is the desserts.  We walked off lunch by viewing the next quilt.This is the time I wish I was a pilot.  I think an aerial view of these quilts would but remarkable. I also thought you might want a close up of the flowers.

















As we were leaving, we notice that in front of the Conference Center there were buggies available for rides.  We couldn't pass up an Amish buggie ride.  We traveled through this covered bridge and stopped for a picture.

Finally we headed to the Shipshewana flea market and auction.  We were too late for the auction but enjoyed the flea market, buying Amish made pastries, jams, and cookies; leather goods, and sunglasses. It capped off a perfect day.  Friday morning we were taking off for Indianapolis but made plans to meet up with Dave and Kathy in Mission, Texas come January.

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