August 2009 Featured Story

Youngsters make their way up the 25-foot milk jug climbing wall, known as the “Udder Heights”, at the Fair Oaks Farms Dairy Adventure — northern Indiana’s best visitor center. The center, served by Jasper County REMC, uses electricity made from the manure of dairy cows which also produce the Fair Oaks dairy products.
Photos by Richard G. Biever, unless noted












2009 choices are a 'polarizing' mix

Hoosiers may be known as middle-of-the-road folks who don’t vote with the fringes. But when it comes to some of their favorite places to go and favorite things to eat, Electric Consumer readers have a definite fringe element to their opinions — at least geographically speaking.

The top votes of our latest Readers’ Choice Awards selecting the “Best of Indiana” were located mostly either in the northern reaches of the state, or along the southern fringe.

Because the main seven categories of our “Best of” ballot, printed in the May issue, drew such polarizing responses, and because the economy might be keeping some from traveling even across the state to check out the winners, we decided this go round to honor the top choices from both northern and southern Indiana for each category. We used Interstate 70 as the dividing line.

The goal of the survey was to highlight the unique places and countryside that make Hoosiers proud to call Indiana home. This was the fourth time we’ve conducted the survey since 2002, but this was the first since 2005.

Winners in many of the categories will receive a certificate recognizing the honor Electric Consumer readers have given them. We thank those who voted and hope all readers will sample the winners and their competition in your area.

If you'd like to revisit past Readers' Choice Awards, here are the links:
• The Best of Indiana 2002
• The Best of Indiana 2003
• The Best of Indiana 2005

Locating the 'Best of Indiana' 2009

Here's where you'll find the 2009 Readers' Choice winners.

Best Community Festival:
Marshall County Blueberry, Plymouth

Heritage Weekend, Lanesville

Best Local Ice Cream Shop:
East End Double Dip & Pizza, Peru

Dairy Barn, Birdseye

Best Family Vacation Spot:
Indiana Beach, Monticello

Holiday World, Santa Claus

Best Bicycle Trails:
Potato Creek State Park, North Liberty

Patoka Lake, Birdseye

Best Place to View Sunrise/Sunset:
Indiana Dunes State Park, Chesterton

Patoka Lake, Birdseye

Best Place for Tenderloin:
Mr. Dave’s, North Manchester

Storie’s, Greensburg

Best Visitor Center:
Fair Oaks Farms Dairy Adventure, Fair Oaks

Historic Corydon Visitor Center, Corydon


Best Community Festival

Marshall County Blueberry, Plymouth
    888-936-5020, 574-936-5020 • www.blueberryfestival.org

Heritage Weekend, Lanesville
    812-952-3091 • www.lanesvilleheritage.org

Both of these popular events, coming up in September, are closely linked to their local agricultural roots.

The Marshall County Blueberry Festival, celebrating the tasty little berry so abundant in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, is Labor Day weekend, Sept. 4-7. The 43rd annual event is themed “Spirit of Community.”

To sum up the event in a few paragraphs is almost impossible, but think of an entire summer listing of “Hoosier Happenings” events from page 6 condensed to four days in one county.

The festival features a parade, carnival rides, pageants, crafts, food and fireworks. And it expands into almost any type of competition imaginable: softball, running, golf, volleyball, pie-eating, cheerleading, firefighting, skateboarding and arm wrestling. There’s also hot air balloons, horses, garden tractor pulls and a whole lot more.

Marshall County REMC, Fulton County REMC and Kankakee Valley REMC are once again co-sponsoring the Touchstone Energy hot air balloon at the festival’s balloon events this year.

The 34th Lanesville Heritage Weekend is the following weekend, Sept. 11-13. This event, attracting more than 70,000 visitors, celebrates the agricultural skills and machinery of the past. Old tractors, steam engines and draft horses are on display and put to work. Field demonstrations include threshing, pottery, sorghum making, blacksmithing, quilting and more. Competitions include everything from kiddie tractor pulls to real tractors to fiddles to road running. The festival, offering free admission, features 260 craft and food booths, a parade, hot air balloon glow, helicopter rides, carnival rides and more.

Noted reader Virginia McMonigle of Corydon on an attachment to her ballot, “Lanesville is a very small town but it seems the whole town gets involved in the festival.”

Best local Ice Cream Shop

East End Double Dip & Pizza, Peru
    451 E. Main St. • 765-472-3436

Dairy Barn, Birdseye
    8 State Road 145 • 812-389-2220

Hoosiers are willing to go out of their way to get good ice cream in a goodly amount at a good price, it seems. Both “Best Local Ice Cream Shops” are not on main drags or in major shopping areas. Both, though, pride themselves on the local family ownership that serves their customers well, and keeps folks coming back for more.

The East End Double Dip & Pizza has been in the Dan Conner family since 1973. Daughter-in-law Kathy, who helps run the business, said it’s hard to put a finger on the exact reason so many readers picked their ice cream shop, but said it’s probably got a lot to do with the family ownership, hard work and small-town traditions. “I really think it’s been in the family for so long, and it’s word of mouth.”

The Double Dip offers 29 hard-pack Edy’s brand flavors and three soft ice cream flavors. It also makes a variety of flavored drinks, and, as its name implies, serves up pizza, too.

Kathy said the shop, open daily through Sept. 27, when it will close until next March, also caters to custom orders. “We can adapt to whatever people want.”

The Birdseye Dairy Barn, in the small town atop the rolling Southern Indiana hills, has been owned by Dwight and Betty Giddens for seven years. In that time, Betty says the shop has been booming. Folks come from Jasper, St. Meinrad, French Lick and all over for what just about every voter noted were giant servings for low prices.

While Betty praises the special mix of ice cream from a local dairy, which offers eight “Flavor Burst” varieties, three soft flavors and 17 varieties of shakes and malts, she said she thinks it’s the special family-owned service that’s key.

The Dairy Barn, an actual red mini-barn, also serves a variety of sandwiches, pizza and burgers.

t’s open daily 11 am-9 pm through October. From Nov. 1-March 1, it’s open Wednesdays-Sundays from 3-8 pm. The Dairy Barn is served electrically by Dubois REC.

Best Family Vacation Spot

Indiana Beach Amusement Resort, Monticello
    574-583-4141 • indianabeach.com
Holiday World, Santa Claus
    812-937-4401 • www.holidayworld.com

These two well-known amusement parks/resorts offer amusement/water park attractions, camping facilities and much more that make them attractive to the whole family.

Indiana Beach returned this season with free general admission for the first time since 1972. It’s one of the few parks in the country to do so. All guests who visit the resort will have unlimited access to the historic Indiana Beach Boardwalk and Amusement Park. Of course, there is a charge for riding the rides and entering the water park. Numerous pass and combo packages are available.

The park is open daily till Labor Day. The last weekend of the season is Sept. 19-20.

Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari is batting four-for-four in our Readers’ Choice survey appearances. New to the park this year is the world’s tallest water ride — Pilgrim’s Plunge.

The park is open daily through Aug. 16, and Labor Day and most weekends through Oct. 11. Parts of the park are served electrically by Southern Indiana Power.

Best Bicycle Trails

Potato Creek State Park, North Liberty
    574-656-8186 • www.dnr.IN.gov

Patoka Lake, Birdseye
    812-685-2464 • www.dnr.IN.gov

We last offered up this Readers’ Choice category the first year in 2002. Patoka Lake took honors then, as it did again this year. Both north and south sites offer camping, swimming, hiking and other activities — along with bike routes.

Potato Creek has 3.2 miles of paved routes and 6.6 miles of mountain biking trails (considered beginner level) snaking around the northeast side of the state park. Bike rentals for the paved routes are available.

Patoka Lake offers about 8 miles of paved trails dedicated to biking. The trails vary from flat to rolling with one long, steep hill rising up from the beach area.
Patoka Lake is no stranger to the Readers’ Choice in a number of past categories, and appears again in the next category, too.

Best Place to View a Sunrise/Sunset

Indiana Dunes, Chesterton
    219-926-1952; www.dnr.IN.gov

Patoka Lake, Birdseye
    812-685-2464; www.dnr.IN.gov

The real winner of this category was something like: “my backyard,” “over my pond,” “through my picture window.” But these two locations emerged from the places we all could actually visit.

The Indiana Dunes, home to a state park and a national lakeshore, offers the most unique landscape in all of Indiana. The giant sand dunes, plant life and surf with the expanse of Lake Michigan beyond and the distant lights of Chicago to the northwest feel like no other place in the state at sunrise, sunset — or high noon.

Patoka Lake, raking in its second nod of this year’s survey, was praised as a prime spot to watch the sun come up or set — especially from a fishing boat, some readers noted.

Reader Douglas Emsweller, a consumer of Decatur County REMC from Batesville, though, offered a unique and inspiring perspective: “Easter Sunday in any church in Indiana that has stained glass windows.”

Best Place to go for a Tenderloin

Mr. Dave’s, North Manchester
    102 E. Main St. • 260-982-4769

Storie’s, Greensburg
    109 E. Main St. • 812-663-9948

From a long list of locations readers named emerged these two noted restaurants. They share similar histories and, it sounds, similar tenderloin preparations.

Both are second generation family-run restaurants that started out more as truck stops on a highway at the outskirts of their respective towns, and moved to their present downtown locations (with almost identical street addresses) in the 1970s.

Mr. Dave’s offers breaded and grilled pork tenderloins. Owner Kevin Clapp said they take fresh Canadian back pork loins and cut them by hand. Their thick tenderloins are taken from the center cut.

Storie’s, voted the Readers’ Choice in 2003 in this category, also uses fresh center cuts to serve breaded and grilled pork tenderloins. On Wednesdays, they offer baked tenderloins, too.

Best Visitor Center

Fair Oaks Farms Dairy Adventure, Fair Oaks
    I-65 exit 220 • 877-536-1194 • www.fofarms.com

Historic Corydon Visitor Center, Corydon
    310 N. Elm St. • 888-738-2137 • thisisIndiana.com

The Fair Oaks Dairy Adventure, featured several times in Electric Consumer stories since its opening in 2003, is not your ordinary information center. It’s a dairy museum and a dairy theme park. It’s a popular destination for school and youth groups and a great stop for motorists along the last northwest stretch of Interstate 65.

Served by Jasper County REMC, the center is a joint venture of the large dairies in the area. The Adventure shows how the modern dairy industry works. The Adventure features a birthing barn, a 3D/4D movies, animations, a “Mooville” play area and bus tours to working dairy farms.

Next to the Adventure is a world-class cheese factory and shop where visitors can watch cheese being made and buy Fair Oaks cheese and ice cream products, sandwiches, Starbucks Coffee and gifts. The center is conveniently located at the base of a new exit off I-65 and Ind. 14.

The Adventure is open daily. Admission is $10 for those 13 and older; $7 for children 3-12. Group tour rates are available.

The Historic Corydon Visitor Center, on a corner positioned between the Old Capitol, the Harrison County Courthouse and the Gov. William Hendricks’ home and headquarters, doesn’t have the bells and whistles like some other visitor centers. Its forte is the wealth of information provided at the counter from folks like travel counselors Bonnie McBride and Joann Yates, both members of Harrison REMC.

“Our visitors don’t know county borders,” said Jeremy Yackle, assistant director of the Harrison County Convention and Visitors Bureau which runs the center. “They don’t know if it’s Crawford County, Harrison County or Floyd County. These ladies take great pride in knowing the whole area. If visitors can’t find it, this is where they end up,” he said. “We go that extra mile to get information out to people.”

The travel counselors will get visitors off in the right direction whether it’s information about the Old Capitol, the Constitution Elm, Corydon’s Civil War battle, Squire Boone Caverns or the abundant recreation in the area.

We should mention the top vote getter in this category was The Forest Discovery Center at Koetter Woodworking in Starlight. Unfortunately the center, which was served electrically by Clark County REMC and featured in an Electric Consumer cover story 12 years ago when it opened, closed to the public early this year. Koetter officials cited the economy and the declining number of visitors as reasons for the closure.

Best Encounter with an Electric Co-op Service or Employee

This category brought in a wide variety of responses. Most had to do with the thankfulness consumers felt for the hard-working linemen who restored their power after remnants of Hurricane Ike hit Indiana last year or after ice storms.

Co-op employees Bob Geswein at Harrison REMC, Rex Shisler at Noble REMC and John Vialard at Marshall County REMC were mentioned the most by name. Electric Consumer and the calendar art contest were also noted multiple times.

Thank you for your kind comments. We’ll share them with the local folks at your co-ops.

'Best of Indiana' Photo Gallery

Here are some photos from the Readers' Choice Award winners for 2009.

Blueberry Hank greets parade watchers at the Marshall County Blueberry Festival — Best Community Festival for Northern Indiana. Photo courtesy of Marshall County Blueberry Festival

Cecil Fravel, a Corydon farmer, conducts a field demonstration with draft horses at the 1997 Lanesville Heritage Weekend — Best Community Festival for Southern Indiana. Photo by Maynard Lambertus, courtesy of Lanesville Heritage Weekend

Emilee Cyphers tops off a cool creamy treat at the East End Double Dip & Pizza in Peru. The Double Dip was voted Northern Indiana's Best Local Ice Cream Shop.

The Dairy Barn in Birdseye was Southern Indiana's Best Local Ice Cream Shop. Enjoying a “flavor burst” cone there last month is Arin Deich. The 5-year-old came with mom and siblings. She’s lucky: her grandma Betty Giddens owns the popular destination. Both the Deichs’ home and the Dairy Barn are served electrically by Dubois REC.

Kirstie Bayer serves a jumbo ice cream cone at the Birdseye Dairy Barn.

While the rest of their family swims at the beach, West Lafayette residents Phil Rawles, right, and Dave Brantley ride the mountain bike trails at Potato Creek State Park last month. The park, just south of South Bend, offers paved and mountain biking trails.

The sun sets over Lake Michigan and Chicago — as viewed from the Indiana Dunes, one of the best places in Indiana to view a sunrise or sunset. Photo by IDNR/Outdoor Indiana magazine

Patoka Lake was voted as Southern Indiana's best place to view a sunrise or sunset — especially from a fishing or a water ski boat! Photo by Carla Hall

Harrison County Visitor Center travel counselors Bonnie McBride, left, and Joann Yates.