We headed back over to Notre Dame to visit some of the sites on campus that weren’t sports based. Our first stop was the Basilica – the church there on campus. It was absolutely beautiful, and no picture could do the stained glass windows justice. Just breathtaking.

From there we went to the Mann Building, which is the building with the golden dome that you always see in pictures of Notre Dame. The painting inside the dome was absolutely beautiful. Let’s face it, it was just a gorgeous campus. One cool thing we learned was that on game days (back to the sports information), the band lines the railings at all of the levels and plays some song – I can’t remember what. Then they march outside, get in formation, and play and march across campus to the stadium. I would love to see that.

From there we were off to visit the Grotto, which was highly recommended to us by several people, and it also was very moving and beautiful. I hope you can enlarge this picture of the informational plaque. Just an incredible campus.

The place where we are staying is called the Varsity Club South Bend, and it is absolutely crammed full of every imaginable kind of Notre Dame memorabilia. We were so excited when we saw a picture of Jeff Burris on one of the walls – hometown boy & everything! Well, Rock Hill, but close enough.

We headed to Shipshewana, Indiana, right in the middle of Amish country, for an absolutely delicious lunch at an Amish buffet that day, and then hit up the Shipshewana Flea Market – over 700 vendors, they said. Pretty amazing.

Not many vacations go by for us without playing goofy golf, and this was no exception. We spent Monday morning in Michigan, because Jeff had never been to that state before, but all the pictures we took were on his phone. I did get this one at our afternoon golf match 🙂

One thing that I wasn’t expecting at Indiana Dunes National Park was that the Century of Progress Houses from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair had been moved there by barge, and that the park now owns the property they sit on. They are leased to private individuals, so we weren’t able to go in the houses, but it was very cool to see them and read about them. I hated that the House of Tomorrow was in the middle of renovations, so we didn’t get to see it as it originally looked, but it was still just very cool.

We had a wonderful day Monday exploring both Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park. We went to the state park first, and Jeff climbed one of the dunes – and these dunes are 250 feet tall, I think they said. Then he realized he forgot to take his camera to get pictures of Lake Michigan, so he climbed it AGAIN. He is crazy! I got this picture of him emptying all of the sand out of his shoes when he got down 🙂

When we got to the National Park, they had steps built over one of the dunes, so I agreed to give that a try – but didn’t realize until we were way into it that there were, in fact, 500 stairs to get over it. Oh my. We got a picture at the overlook at the top.

The park sort of wraps around the southern edge of Lake Michigan, and ends up right in town in Gary, Indiana. We were very excited to see this mural on the wall of a building there in the city as we were leaving 🙂

We checked into our condo Saturday evening, and then Sunday we headed over to explore the stadium at Notre Dame – less than three miles from where we are staying. It is an impressive place to put it mildly. Jeff said he felt like he was at the Cathedral of College Football when we got out of the car :-). I especially loved the old wooden doors that were all around this place. So cool.

One of my favorite things that we saw was at the Student Center attached to the stadium. Every doorhandle represented a different facet of student life. This one was ROTC, which we loved seeing since Clara is so involved in that program at school.

We walked over to the library to see this huge mosaic on the front of the building. Since you can see it from the stadium, they call it the Touchdown Jesus. Just a fun day.

I love when we are in Indiana on Thursday nights, and get to go out to Mark’s house and listen to the band practice. We even talked Jeff’s dad into going with us, which he hasn’t much wanted to do lately, I understand. I got this picture of Mark in action. Fun time.

Jeff & I left Wednesday on our 50th anniversary trip, and the first night we stayed in Corbin, KY, to visit Cumberland Falls. It’s one of our favorite stopping off places between home and Indiana, and we loved it as much as we always have. If you look close you can see one of the rafts that you could rent to take you out almost under the falls, but we didn’t go for that.

Stopped on the way out of the park at this great old scenic overlook built by the CCC. The trees were really too grown up for us to see much at all, but it would be a beautiful view in the winter.

I absolutely loved the photo area Addie & Lee made for June’s graduation party. In keeping with the theme there was ivy, just like Taylor Swift’s song, and of course the Graduation Era banner. This is the graduate with her great aunts and uncles who were there, as well as with her very, very proud (and tired, I’m sure, after creating this party) mama.