-Carol Jinbo
When the “frost is on the pumpkin” in Indiana is a great time to plan a trip down to Brown County and to Nashville, Indiana. My husband and I decided to get away from Terre Haute and to go down to Nashville for a picturesque ride on a Saturday.
We took State Road 46 past Bloomington about 15 miles and then turned on State Road 135 then you are in the heart of downtown Nashville. Nashville has long been known as an artist’s colony. Nashville has been home to an artist’s colony since around the early 1900’s and was one of six major art colonies that was founded around that time throughout the country. Before you get to the city of Nashville on State Road 46 is the entrance to Brown County State Park. The park is another wonderful place to see fall foliage. One of the reasons we had decided to go to Nashville, which is south and east, was to avoid the Covered Bridge Festival crowds which are north and west of Terre Haute. The picture below is at the intersection of State Road 46 and State Road 59. State Road 59 goes to Center Point. Center Point is the home of the “Exotic Feline Rescue Center.” http://www.exoticfelinerescuecenter.org/
A word of warning if you decide to follow this route, there still is road construction near Ellettsville, which makes life very interesting for those residents. The timing of our trip turned out not to be so terrific for the avoidance of crowds. When we were approaching Bloomington we noticed that there was a lot more traffic than usual. http://www.city.bloomington.in.us/
My husband said, “Oh, I forgot this is Indiana University’s Homecoming weekend.” http://www.indiana.edu/
The football game was just letting out, so we followed traffic bumper to bumper through downtown Bloomington at a snail’s pace. At least taking this route through downtown, we saw Bloomington’s courthouse square that is always pretty with colorful flowers planted in window boxes on the upper floors of the buildings surrounding the courthouse. The flower boxes have delicate ivy cascading down from them to the lower levels of the building, blowing in the breeze. Everyone was out and about on campus since this was Homecoming and most were dressed in IU red. The only group that really stood out was the ever-present Goth’s in their black attire. In the city and in the University village people were eating al fresco at several restaurants.
We continued through Bloomington on to historic Nashville.
Right before you reach Nashville is a small sign that designates the road to the “House of the Singing Winds”. I visited there several years ago with a docent group from the Swope who were studying the “Brown County Artist’s” or the “Hoosier Group”. http://www.browncounty.com/history.html The “ House of the Singing Winds” was the home of the Hoosier Artist T.C. Steele (Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926), http://167.217.251.156/ms098/bTcsteele.html T. C. Steele was one of the most prominent of the Brown County artists group. The best known of his paintings are his landscapes of Brown County. Steele and his wife loved Brown County so much that they built their summer home and studio in there in 1907 and named it “House of the Singing Winds.” http://www.ourbrowncounty.com/0802s5.htm The home is an Indiana historic site, which is open to the public. It is especially interesting to go through the artist’s studio and see what other types of paintings he made. Many of his paintings in his studio were of his wife’s flower gardens; these paintings really show off his impressionistic regional style. In his studio were also portraits which looked almost like they were painted by a different person because they were so dark and realistic looking. His portraits I found out were painted while he was in training at a school of art in Munich, Germany. It was during the end of the Victorian period that he and his wife lived in the “House of the Singing Winds”. The interior decoration in the home is characteristic of that period in time with heavy dark Victorian furniture and floral patterns everywhere. The house is situated on the top of a hill so that the view from the windows of the home is of the beautiful colorful hills. The most unusual thing I remember about the living room was that there was a stuffed peacock on a stand there just for decoration. (Wonder how you clean that?)
The city of Nashville is that of shop after shop. http://www.nashville-indiana.com/nashvilleindiana.html Some might say a tourist trap. It certainly was crowded the day we went. Of course we (and everyone else) went when the trees color was at their peak. There are restaurants, craft stores, artist’s studios and souvenir shops. I can remember going to Nashville during the 70’s and there were just a few shops there. It has grown by leaps and bounds since then but some of the original shops are still there. Professional artists do live in Nashville and produce works of art in various mediums year round http://www.browncountyartalliance.com/
Before getting into Nashville we were surprised to see “ Little Nashville Opry Country & Bluegrass Music Theatre” there was a crowd gathering there too. http://www.littlenashvilleopry.com/ We saw on the sign that Tanya Tucker was going to perform that evening. What a surprise to see a famous name performing out in the middle of the country!
In the wintertime, you can ski there at Ski World there is a ski area and lift right before you get to Nashville proper http://www.nashville-indiana.com/recreation/skiworld/ski.html
I think that a trip to Nashville, Indiana or to Bloomington is well worth your time and effort. As you can see there is something for everyone in these two cities and they are really not that far away from Terre Haute and very accessible.