The One Where Patwoman Takes A Much Needed Break

Found this squirrel S&P set
in an antique shop. It's nuts!

Bill Monroe was a relative of mine, actually.

We decided to take the day and go down to Brown County. R and Bre were able to join us. Unfortunately, M and Ryan were both working. Still, it was a nice day to be walking around and looking at the shops. Good weather.

Took some doing to get down there, though. Apparently a bridge had washed out on the main north/south route, so we really had to travel some backroads to get there. I think a lot of people must have been put off by that (or else they just couldn't figure out how to get there) because the town was pretty empty of tourists. It was actually kind of nice for us. Though, I'm very sure the business owners weren't happy.

But, for us, there was no waiting anywhere and plenty of stuff to do. Of course, we visited some art galleries and antique shops. There are a lot of those down there. And no trip to Brown County is complete without a trip to one or more lapidaries.

This carved stone T-Rex was pretty cool.

I have been slightly obsessed with mineral spheres since the beginning of this depression. I'm pretty sure that must be significant in some way, but I don't have a clue what it means. I just like the weight and the smoothness and the shape. I don't have a thing for other shapes, just spheres. Weird.

Anyway, we stopped in and I looked around a bit at the minerals. I didn't buy any, though, because I already have a Rose Quartz sphere ordered from eBay and I feel like that's treat enough for now.

But one of the shops did have some carved mineral statuettes that were pretty cool. Bre bought a little goldstone cat statue (I would have bought a black and white cat in honor of Achilles, but alas, they didn't have one.) There were all kinds of carved animals and a lot of fossils, too. It was very interesting to see some of the ancient Indiana fossils.




Brown County is kind of an artist community, so I was surprised that we only found one yarn shop. Seems like it would be a natural thing to have a bunch of shops for hand-dyed wool and artisan fibers, right? Oh sure, there are a couple of shops that sell some hand-knit shawls or blankets, and one that sells some pretty sweet yarn bowls. But that was not their main focus.

We did find one yarn store, but it had closed half an hour prior to us finding it. Shame, too. I would have loved to have gone inside. There were some really cool knits in the window and the whole store was yarn bombed, from the railing outside, to the window, to the knit and crochet bunting draped across the front.

I will definitely stop back at this shop next time so I can spend some time inside.


One little shop, almost in the alley, really, had a bunch of chainsaw-cut statues. Like, really big statues. I was a little amazed by it.

Seriously. Look how big this thing is.

Fear it!

There's always a little goofing around with our family. I was trying to get R to cringe in front of the dragon. This is me, saying "Fear it! Fear it! Like this!"

I didn't really notice T taking my photo while I was doing this. Imagine what onlookers were thinking, though. Some crazy lady, cringing in fear at a wooden dragon, yelling "Fear it!"

No one looked twice, though. That's disappointing, in a way.

I dunno. Maybe the locals are just used to that kind of behavior. Or, you know, maybe they thought it they acknowledged it, they would have to deal with it.

Ha!


We rounded off our trip with a visit to one of the wine shops, where I tasted a few different wines and finally settled on a bottle of sweet red, and then a trip to the candy shop.

Candy named "whore"!

I didn't actually buy horehound candy. I think it tastes too much like Ricola Cough Drops. But I took this photo because I like the name horehound. Because I'm immature and think it would be a great burn on someone. "You take your paws off my boyfriend, Brittany, you horehound!"

For the record, I ended up buying some caramel apple suckers for M, some nonpariels (my fave), and some rum and amaretto cordials. The cordials were a nice surprise, by the way. I will definitely get those again.

I would like to do some hiking in the state forest next time we go down. Then, with all that exercise done, I won't have to feel guilty about eating so much candy, right?