One of my goals this summer is to explore Indiana a little more. I’ve lived here for years, and I’ve seen some of the big attractions – the Dunes, Clifty Falls, the Children’s Museum. . .  But I really should know more about the state than I do! Some of this is driven by the fact that it’s the 200th anniversary of Indiana as a state, and some is driven by the fact that my school filter is always saying, What if I teach… fourth grade and Indiana History? Must. Be. Prepared.

We went to Cataract Falls this weekend and it was a fun family jaunt. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes southwest of Indianapolis, and what we THOUGHT was going to happen was that we were going to park the car, hike through a forest, and end up at the falls. We would eat lunch, play in the water a little bit, and then hike back.

We had to laugh at ourselves when we pulled up and there were the Falls! an easy stroll from the car. We climbed down among the rocks and walked through Owen County’s only covered bridge to get to the other side of the falls… and drove through some greenery to get to the other part of the falls. There might be some hiking trails that we didn’t see, to be fair. And it was totally worth it, just funny to have our expectations changed.

We tried to talk my mother-in-law into going, based on it being such an easy walk to a place overlooking the Falls, but she declined. Maybe another time!

We did take Sandy, our dog, who loved it. I thought he’d be worn out afterwards – we were all worn out afterwards, as it was 91 degrees, but Sandy was all fired up and ready for more, once he had a little air conditioning break on the way back home.