Brown County for Our 9th Anniversay

Two weeks ago we were in Brown County Indiana. The weather was fine and the food was good and the bed and breakfast we stayed at, Oak Haven was a delight. I was able to do yoga on the back deck under the stars, breakfast was good and our room was comfortable. With Bloomington only 16 miles a way, we had a good mix of things to do. So what's so special about Brown County? It is just a nice mix of beautiful scenery, art galleries and antiques, good independent restaurants and misc activity. We went to four wineries, including Oliver, and you might recognize that from the grocery store. Their best wines though were from their independent label. Their tasting room was bright, airy, lots of woodwork and wonderfully landscaped. Below are some pictures of their chambourcin grapes, right before picking. We were allowed to stop, take pictures and sample a few.

Beautiful countryside, whether it's Ashville North Carolina or the west coast of Michigan, attracts artists. We saw a lot of great art and visited the permanent gallery of the work of Marie Goth and Veraldo Giuseppe Cariani. Google Maris Goth and learn more about here. I loved both styles of paintings, but loved her story. She went to a local technical school (we are talking 1915-ish and won an art scholarship to a New York. Her parents didn't want her to go, they wanted her to marry a local boy, but she went and there she met Veraldo or "VJ" they became great friends but then he enlisted to serve in World War I. He saw a lot of action and came back to New York with such severe PTSD (shell shock back then) that Marie persuaded him to come back with her to Brown County Indian, where they, her sister and brother and law basically hung out in the quiet wooded hills and painted and painted. They never married, in fact, it sounds like we aren't sure how their relationship was defined, but they remained lifelong friends, living into their nineties. I'm so bad at posting links that work, just google Marie Goth, I think she was a woman before her time. If you go to Brown County I recommend eating at the Hobnob Restaurant in Nashville and Farm in Bloomington. It's just called Farm, not "the farm." And we did a bit of hiking. Brown County State Park is the largest in Indiana, and only has four venomous snake species, so you know, super...

We heard lots of woodpeckers and saw lots of holes, but none of the big pileated ones revealed themselves to us.

I had never seen so many chipmunks in my life, which is handy for the eastern timber rattlesnake that snacks on them. The eastern timber lays it's head and...neck, or first half of its body across the many fallen trees on the forest floor as both chipmunks and squirrels use these logs as express lanes. The rattler blends into the bark and uses the vibration on the log to judge when to strike.

We did see a handful of deer, but the real fine was made by Andrew, who spotted this "five line skink" on a tree.

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/five-lined_skink.htm We hiked to this lake, and I thought it was a good idea. I forgot that with the lack of rain that the lake might be, um, less than impressive and it was a long trail to get there...going downhill on the way there of course so it meant uphill on the way back. It was a bit deserted and reminded me, of a lake that lost hikers would come across, you know, before the axe murderer comes out. But I got a picture of these little ducks, they aren't mallards but I haven't had time to identify them.

When we hiked around the far side of the lake, there was this jumble of limbs and brush along the bank and Andrew said he thought it was the work of a beaver and I blew it off, then twenty feet down the trail we found this.

...and I had to eat a little crow. Can you find the little toad in this picture?

We went to the Nature Center and it was pretty cool. They had lots of lovely displays including a transparent honeybee hive (we couldn't find the queen) a live turtle and a live timber rattler (that scared the beejeesus out of me when I turned around from the turtle he was slithering up his case at near eye level to me) and an awesome, awesome bird feeding area outside. We sat on benches in the center surrounded by identification posters and watched the activity. It was mesmerizing. Here are some shots.

All in all it was a great trip! Speaking of trips, the Country Living Fair post will be next so stay tuned.