It’s a great day to be alive

July 3, 2024

Day Five: Shipshewana to South Bend

The program for today was a short ride to South Bend, where we will spend the Fourth for a badly needed rest day. It was a short ride in mileage but it took us through several worlds.

After a lavish breakfast with made-to-order omelets (a new standard for your complementary hotel breakfast), we set out on the Pumpkin Vine Trail, sharing it with Amish folk running errands and people out for exercise.

The scenery was beautiful as we rode through well-tended farmland. Wildflowers bordered the trail. The path was in excellent shape. The final pieces opened only last year. We stopped to take pictures at an excellent garden managed by a local nursery and fooled around at various signs posted along the trail.

Krider Nurseries’ World’s Fair Garden in Middlebury, In. It’s a public park alongside the path.

This sculpture is titled The Gathering Place

The inscription reads, “In loving memory of the Middlebury mystery carver.”

Coffee stop in Goshen just as the path was changing and our energy was flagging.

Eventually, the trail merged into an older path that paralleled a road into an exurban landscape of railroad lines, light manufacturing and strip malls. I was expecting all of it. It wasn’t pretty bit the path kept us safe. Even this ended ,and we were on local streets. And the adventure changed.

We didn’t take any pictures from this point to the hotel. The last few heavy mileage days had started to take a toll on us. Pedaling was no longer quite so easy; sitting on a bike saddle, no longer so comfortable. The surroundings didn’t matter so much as finishing the ride. Easier said than done.

Street signs in downtown Elkhart seem to be mounted backwards. Which led to a few wrong turns. And once that was sorted, we ran into a street closure. Google guided us through the detour, which involved several busy roads.

But we made it with a little help from a fellow cyclist who overtook us on the final approach to South Bend. A high school teacher, he assured us that the road ahead would be rideable. He was right.

We ate at the South Bend Brew Works and then went to Four Winds Field to watch the South Bend Cubs. The stadium was great; the Cubs lost 13 to 6 to the Peoria Chiefs.

After the game, a Christian heavy metal band, Seventh Day Slumber, took the stage in the outfield. It wasn’t really our kind of music, but we stayed for the fireworks, which seemed a fitting way to cap the day and start the Fourth.

For our first beers after several days in “dry” country, we visited South Bend Beer Werks. Excellent and beer!

Seventh Day Slumber’s show used the stadium screen to show their lyrics, all the better for proselytizing.

Night falls more slowly here than on the East Coast. This was taken at 9:54 pm. The photo above at 9:15 pm. Guess we’re almost to the Central time zone.

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Listen: It’s A Great Day To Be Alive, Darrell Scott

Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 268 miles (431 km)

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