While out in Indianapolis for a wedding reception recently, Cindy and I took a couple side trips to see some sights. One of the places we ended up in was the town of Nashville, IN, a little artist's colony in the heart of the picturesque Brown County area of Indiana (see map). Nashville is just down the road from Bean Blossom, IN, and just over from Gnaw Bone, IN. (It's true! You can look it up on the map!)
Nashville is also a center for music, primarily Bluegrass music. They have a couple of performance places in the area and the annual Bean Blossom Music Festival takes place in Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe's adopted hometown. In addition to music, there are a number of museums, shops, restaurants and other tourist places in the Nashville area. And Brown County State Park, the largest state park in Indiana, is located just outside of Nashville.
We stayed the night before at a Comfort Inn near the entrance of the Nashville's city limits. It was getting late in the day and we thought we'd better just take the first thing we saw. It turned out there were more eclectic and interesting hotels in Nashville to choose from. We had a great dinner that I'll fill you in on later, but our next day was to explore the nooks and crannies of Nashville before we headed back to Iowa.
Our first stop was breakfast at a place called That Sandwich Place which is basically a shrine to the former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. It has, arguably, the highest concentration of Bobby Knight and Indiana memorabilia any where. The owner, Larry Hawkins, has been collecting the memorabilia since Knight first coached the Hoosiers in the early 70's. The waitress explained to us that Bob Knight used to frequent the place when he was living over in nearby Bloomington. The above picture shows where Knight would sit and "hold court" duing his visits to the restaurant.
Cindy and I had pancakes - I had blueberry pancakes and Cindy had their specialty oatmeal pancakes. The food was OK, nothing special. But it was filling and a good start to the day.
Most of the shops didn't open until 10 a.m., but we found a few places that were opened at nine. This was the back of a little flower/gardening shop that didn't open until 10. But you could walk into the back area and look around at anytime. They had a bunch of plants, statues and garden knick-knacks just sitting out. Obviously, the shop owner must have trusted the people who came to visit Nashville.
Here is one of the stately houses on the main street through town that has been turned into a shop. Driving around the town, we found a lot of older houses like this, in addition to contemporary houses and basic log cabins. Many of the small shops and larger homes were built in the early part of the 1900's.
Here's Cindy checking out a number of roses a flower shop had at half-off. Some of them were very pretty and it was tempting not to buy a couple at $12 to $15 bucks each. But as I pointed out to Cindy, the 23 or so rose bushes that we now have will work for the time being.
The town started to get filled up with tourists by the middle part of the morning. A lot of motorcyclists come to Nashville on the weekends as the roads leading to the city are twisting ribbons through picturesque valleys and over the small southern Indiana peaks. There are a couple shops that cater to the motorcyclists, but many of the shops are artist galleries and touristy places that sell t-shirts and fudge.
A number of the shops share common courtyards off the street. There are benches and lots of shade to help the most weary walker get some rest. There's a few hills in Nashville, but nothing really bad. This little courtyard had a sock shop, an antique place, a pottery store and a bird store in it. I was just happy to be able to sit and hang out while Cindy explored every nook and cranny of a lot of the little shops.
We also went to the Chateau Thomas Winery tasting room they have in Nashville. Although I was familiar with their wines through my friend, Steve Somermeyer, I wanted to go in and check the place out. It turned out there was an art gallery on the second floor of the wine tasting area. We went up and took a look around for a moment. I think Cindy was getting a good kick out of seeing all the art. But I was getting kind of bored.
We walked out of a gallery and it had begun to rain. We decided that we'd seen enough and it was time to head back home to Iowa. It's about a five and a half hour trip back to the Quad Cities and a good portion of it was done in the rain.
Given the amount of trees in the rolling hills and valleys of Brown County, Nashville gets pretty packed on fall afternoons when the leaves are in full color. But even in the spring and summer when the flowers are in full bloom, it's a picturesque little community. While it is somewhat of a tourist trap, I got more of a sense of community among the people who worked and lived in Nashville while we were there. It was a nice visit and a place we'll probably go back to sometime down the line.
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