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| We left Indianapolis just a couple of days too late, because we endured the first snow, and it was seven degrees (Farenheit) the morrning we left. |
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| The view from our "hopper" flight from Belize City to Dangriga. Ahhhh, this looks much more appealing. |
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| We're happy to be back in Belize! |
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| Tent City begins at Hayride to Hell, our friends' annual Halloween camp-out weekend in beautiful Brown County. |
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| Since the original house burned down last winter in a fire, and the new house is under construction, everyone had to sleep in tents and use the portable toilets this year. That's why it's called the "Pioneer Edition". |
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| That's also why a tent became the center of the festivities. |
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| Our friend Mark made this wonderful, creepy chandelier for the tent. |
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| Thankfully it was a beautiful weekend for camping. |
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| The Halloween decorations are always wonderful, and we are happy to help set up. |
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| Things are coming together... |
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| The jack-o-lanterns are always creative, and often funny. |
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| Our friends are so talented - love the entries for the pumpkin competition. |
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| More people arrive and things get under way. |
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| The first hayride is usually for the kids, and the adults enjoy the nighttime hayrides. |
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| Mark's chandelier in full glory. |
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| Later in the evening the bonfire is the secondary gathering spot. |
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| This Cheshire Cat jack-o-lantern really came to life at night. |
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| A murderous Alice in Wonderland tea party. |
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| Cards Against Humanity. |
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| American Gothic. |
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| Head in a jar - creative costume. |
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| Pioneer woman, in keeping with the theme. |
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| The Invisible Man. |
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| Head on a plate - also very creative. |
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| The last hayride is on Sunday morning when the riders toss all the hay into the field along the way. |
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| We always stay to help tear everything down, and we stay most of the day. |
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| While Eric played board games in the barn, Cara enjoyed a walk down to the lake.5- |
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| Peaceful and beautiful as always! |
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| The leaves were definitely changing colors more down at the lake than up at the barn. |
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| Alas, it's finally time to go home. |
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| We had a great time. Many thanks to our hosts and all our friends. See you next year! |
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| When we returned to Indiana we spent some time with family and friends in Haubstadt. However, the main focus was preparing for Dan's Celebration of Life there. |
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| A friend put together this wonderful photo tribute to Dan and the most important thing in his life - his friends and family. |
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| Dan loved the many T-shirts he had collected during his travels. Stephanie and other family members took ones that meant something to them, and some meaningful ones were made into pillows for several of us. The rest were set out at the event for his other friends to take in his memory. |
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| It was a super touching and emotional event. Several people spoke about how he had touched their lives, and, in fact, over two hundred people showed up for the celebration, including several friends from New York and L.A.! Everyone shared great and funny stories about Dan. He would have loved it! |
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| We were treated to Mimosas, as well as donuts and veggie quiche from a nearby restaurant called The Garden Table. |
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| This was originally supposed to be a hard hat tour of the facilities, but because they were fixing the roof of the building at that time, a small group of Yelpers met at the offices of Hendricks, the company doing the renovation and development. |
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| Megan from Hendricks was super bubbly and gave a nice presentation about what is being planned for the space. Everyone was happy to hear that they are preserving as much of the beautiful building as possible. So, the renovated and updated space will house a food hall (different than a food court because it showcases unique, local restaurants), a boutique hotel, a movie theater, a bowling alley (with duckpin bowling and regular bowling), apartments and condominiums, office space, and lots of retail space. |
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| At the time of the event, there were 12 vendors committed to places in the food hall. There is space for about 27 vendors. |
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| An overview of what the new space will look like. |
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| We bicycled downtown with our friends, Mark and Annette, and their daughter. We hoped to catch the parade of costumed attendees of Gen Con, a gaming convention. We arrived at the tail end of the parade, so Mark got some photos, but we did not. We went inside, and it was packed with people. |
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| This shows a couple of people kind of dressed up. |
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| Some people obviously couldn't wait to play the new games they had purchased, so they just found a spot on the floor. |
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| Afterwards we continued south to the Bates-Hendricks neighborhood for their Street Fest. This is a new "up-and-coming" area that is new to us. Apparently, people are moving here instead of Fountain Square because it is more affordable. (Fountain Square used to be considered an "up-and-coming" neighborhood, but now we'd say it has arrived.) |
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| There were several nice craft booths to explore. |
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| There were free hot dogs, chips and drinks provided by a local church. Another church booth (not pictured) offered free Root Beer Floats. |
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| We also sampled food from this food truck. Cara had seen it before but wrote it off figuring they only had meat items. |
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| However, the food truck had Vegan Tacos, with tofu that was seasoned and smoked the same way their chicken is! Cara and Annette split an order and loved them. |
