The Rest of Monday in Indiana

We're in the laundry room at 11:30 p.m. after a full day, washing stuff up so it will fit back in our suitcases. So the blog will continue until the laundry is done!

After we finally caught up with our luggage and cleaned up in the train station bathrooms we thought we'd get a look at Notre Dame University before heading for Goshen. It ended up being quite a bit further than we thought it would be, and then we couldn't drive onto campus. We were both getting hungry enough that we didn't want to take time to park and walk through the grounds, so we headed south -- at least that's what we think we were doing.

The entry to Notre Dame that we didn't enter

We don't know what went wrong, but it took us a LONG time to travel the short distance between Elkhart and Goshen. But we finally made it to the retirement residence where Mary Oyer lives, and Joseph went in to visit her while I hunted down our motel, walked through town a bit, mailed DP records back home, and then met Joseph at the Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College.

By that time I was becoming brain-dead and fairly useless for helping Joseph. I read through an old book summarizing Joseph Funk's contribution to music, especially singing schools, in the South, and looked through some 1861 issues of Aldine's music magazine.

1861 editions of the "Southern Musical Advocate and Singer's Friend"

We also got to hold a 1860 Harmonia Sacra, another one that Gabriel would have helped print. It's so fun to come into such close contact with our ancestors from so long ago, and to understand just a little better what roles they were playing in God's kingdom during their lives. It continues to impress me how God has led our family to do some work that also involves book publishing and selling.

1860 Harmonia Sacra. For some reason the computer insists on rotating the picture like this!

Then my body started rebelling over its lack of sleep. I stared for awhile and yawned a lot.

As we were leaving the library, I saw a poster that reminded me that there was a quilt exhibit there on the college campus. The poster told us it was in the library, so we headed back in. I wish you had been there, Bev. You would have really enjoyed the exhibit. I sure did. Several quilts were made by a lady name Edith Shanholt, a lady who looks like she has the same quilter's disease as Aunt Colleen. I really liked her quilts. She had a set of three -- or maybe four -- that were based on Bible studies she had done. One was on the Psalms, one on the women of the Bible, one on the names of God, and one on the names of Jesus. Each was a smaller (crib-size) sampler quilt with lots of different smaller blocks all put together into one quilt. She had charts with the quilts that showed which person or name or Psalm each block depicted. They were each amazingly detailed!

The set of four quilts based on women of the Bible, names of Christ etc.

Part of the quilt show in the Goshen College basement

There were also many other quilts that I really enjoyed. Most involved applique, which I like, or very detailed, small piecing. I really liked most of the fabrics and design. Joseph laid down on a bench in the exhibit after taking pictures. He says the tiles in the ceiling were waving around and changing shapes. Guess he was tired, too!

After the quilt show, and Joseph going back in again to get his computer that he had left behind (!), we went downtown to a soda fountain I had seen in my earlier exploration. Ice cream! We sat on stools at the counter. I can't remember how old the place was, but it has been around for a long time. Joseph got a "Goshen College sundae" and I got a banana split. They were REALLY good, and a very nutritious lunch (milk, eggs, nuts, fruit).

The cool diner and ice cream place that we forgot the name of.

We headed to our hotel and moved in. After resting for a bit, reading and writing, we decided we wanted to go out and drive in the country before the sun set.

Gobs of buggies everywhere. They leave landmines all over the road...

We wandered through a lot of the Amish area, driving around horses and buggies, taking pictures, enjoying the tidy farms and gardens, and we even drove up into Michigan, just so we could say we had been in Michigan, and drove about 10 miles east before going back down into Indiana.

We went to Michigan. One more state checked off the list.

We smelled cows, chickens, pigs, fresh cut hay, and brush piles burning.

The buggies have flashing lights on them at night, so you can see them on the road. It's interesting. The roads are all worn on the outside edges, unless they have been repaved, because of the horses' hooves striking them all the time.

We actually got to bed at 12:08 and didn't wake up until daylight!