EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Indiana
Distance - 111 miles
Time - 4 hours
Kimbra and I both decided to sleep in nice and late, then headed for breakfast at the South Bend Chocolate Company! We had bagels and coffee instead of the many delicious looking pastries, but being surrounded by the smell of chocolate was a very pleasant way to start the day, and the large restaurant area gave us the freedom to sit and chat for a few hours without feeling pressured to leave and let others take over the table. She had to go to TA one of her classes, but since that left me with a bit of wiggle room in my travel time to my next destination she suggested that I stop at one of the wineries that she had visited on a Michigan wine tour! So after our goodbyes I went ahead and set the GPS to the Round Barn Winery, and off I went.
I didn't realize it, but apparently there's a whole little pocket of Michigan where grapes grow very well, and I passed a number of signs for various vineyards as I drove along the little back roads towards Baroda. I was tempted to stop at a few others with fun names, but once I saw a sign with the Round Barn logo I was glad that I decided to stick with my original choice (yes, I do chose my wines by their logos). They are known mostly for their wines, but opened a microbrewery in 2006 and got into distilling spirits a few years ago, so they have two separate tasting barns - one for wine and spirits, one for beer. The original "round barn" was previously located further upstate but once the owners purchased the vineyard they pulled apart, moved, and reassembled it in its current location. I sampled a few of the beers (including a wonderful cocoa stout that tasted like coffee), two of the wines, and their black walnut creme liquor - I'm still learning a lot about beers and wines but I did enjoy everything I sampled and the staff was very knowledgeable and happy to chat for a few hours. Visiting on a Monday afternoon was a good (if unintentional) choice - there were very few other visitors so it was easy to wander around and ask lots of questions, they said that on the weekends it can get pretty busy.
Kimbra and I both decided to sleep in nice and late, then headed for breakfast at the South Bend Chocolate Company! We had bagels and coffee instead of the many delicious looking pastries, but being surrounded by the smell of chocolate was a very pleasant way to start the day, and the large restaurant area gave us the freedom to sit and chat for a few hours without feeling pressured to leave and let others take over the table. She had to go to TA one of her classes, but since that left me with a bit of wiggle room in my travel time to my next destination she suggested that I stop at one of the wineries that she had visited on a Michigan wine tour! So after our goodbyes I went ahead and set the GPS to the Round Barn Winery, and off I went.
I didn't realize it, but apparently there's a whole little pocket of Michigan where grapes grow very well, and I passed a number of signs for various vineyards as I drove along the little back roads towards Baroda. I was tempted to stop at a few others with fun names, but once I saw a sign with the Round Barn logo I was glad that I decided to stick with my original choice (yes, I do chose my wines by their logos). They are known mostly for their wines, but opened a microbrewery in 2006 and got into distilling spirits a few years ago, so they have two separate tasting barns - one for wine and spirits, one for beer. The original "round barn" was previously located further upstate but once the owners purchased the vineyard they pulled apart, moved, and reassembled it in its current location. I sampled a few of the beers (including a wonderful cocoa stout that tasted like coffee), two of the wines, and their black walnut creme liquor - I'm still learning a lot about beers and wines but I did enjoy everything I sampled and the staff was very knowledgeable and happy to chat for a few hours. Visiting on a Monday afternoon was a good (if unintentional) choice - there were very few other visitors so it was easy to wander around and ask lots of questions, they said that on the weekends it can get pretty busy.
I looked at my phone and realized that I'd happily whiled away over two hours at the winery, so after I ate lunch I got back on the road and finished traveling to Battle Creek to stay with Laura and her fiance Frederic. Laura and I met in Peace Corps - we were in the same training group, and actually lived fairly close together but due to geography and road locations didn't ever get to visit each other in our villages because the only way to get from one village to the other would have taken easily a day or two of traveling by bus and bike! So we saw each other from time to time in Ouaga or in our regional city of Ouahigouya. Laura met Frederic very early in our service and by the time we left the country they were engaged!
The process of getting a fiance visa for someone in Burkina is a very long, frustrating, and confusing one, but their persistence paid off and Frederic arrived in the country about a month ago. I've hardly used my French since I left Burkina almost a year ago, but I was happily surprised to find that I could still speak at about the same (very elementary) level that I could when I was in country, and there were only a few places where I was missing the key word in my sentence and had to get Laura or Frederic to translate for me. He doesn't speak in English very confidently but he absolutely understands a good deal so with the three of us searching for words we managed to keep the Franglish conversation going fairly smoothly.
We went out for dinner and then headed over to Laura's mom's house to chat for a little while. She sent us home with the most amazing chocolate chip cookies - Laura said that they're made with vanilla pudding mix, which explains why they were so deliciously rich! I had a Burkina-nostalgia moment when Frederic asked if I liked "cacahuetes" and "koro koro" - when I said yes he pulled out bags of each of them and gave me some to take with me! Cacahuetes are peanuts, which in Burkina are shorter than in the US, almost round, that you either eat fresh (they taste a bit like grass more than peanut), boiled in the shell, or in this case they were shelled and lightly roasted, probably in a very large metal pot or a small metal drum rotated over a fire, and have a fairly light and subtle peanut taste. Koro koro are very crunchy cookie-type snacks made from unsalted peanut butter that you fry in oil. They didn't sell them in my village but when I was in training one of the aunts in my courtyard made them to sell at the market - she rolled them into 1/4 inch logs and then formed them into 4 inch diameter rings before frying them. These were another form, a ball of dough pressed between two fingers and your thumb to make a three pointed star kind of shape. Even after being in a giant ziplock bag for a month, they still tasted like Burkina and I'm still smiling even thinking about how happy it made me to see and taste them after so long.
Pictures: (note to self - take more photos with people in them!)
Pumpkins in South Bend
Hello Michigan!
The round barn at Round Barn Winery
Vineyards
Cacahuetes and koro koro
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