Lights in the Darkness

On Saturday (7-10) I thought it would be nice to take Amy out for the afternoon. Nothing fancy or expensive, just some old fashioned Indy exploration. Sometimes I like to look for interesting places that I've passed by a hundred times but never seem to find the actual time to visit. The Morris-Butler House Museum is one of those types of places.



The house was built between 1864-65 in the Old Northside Historic District of Indianapolis. It's a block or two west of College & 13th. There are tours scheduled every hour. The cost is $5 per adult. Amy & I were the only ones on the tour.

The Morris-Butler museum had been restored as close to its original state as possible and it was quite beautiful. However, one of the rules was that photography was ok, using a flash was not. I didn't have a tripod, and it was pretty dark in there so I was bummed that I wasn't going to get any interesting photos...


But then I saw the first of many beautiful hand painted or etched glass encasements for the lighting and thought it could be fun to do a little series of these colorful beacons in the dark Victorian mansion.



In 1964, the house was nearly destroyed to make way for I-70 when Eli Lilly intervened in and provided funding for restoration. Apparently he grew up a block or two away from the house and had known the Butlers and was quite fond of the building.



The house was then open to the public in 1969. The Indiana Landmarks Society staffs the house for tours and hosts events and art galleries. Hoosier Salon has a gallery in the basement.


We spent about an hour there walking and chatting with the tour guide about life back then, and had a really great time. It may have been one of the more memorable ten bucks I spent this summer (aside from cliff diving)





After the house tour, we continued down to the Mass Ave. district which ended up being a really great time too. I'll maybe blog about that in the near future if I find the time.

Noblenight

Got a little bit restless the other night and decided to snap some night time photos of Noblesville, Indiana.

It was a good time.

Click on the photos to see full size.

Alley & Main

Ghost Walkers

Dali-esque

Death's Door

Hardware on the Square

Blur

Syd's Bar - Fine Foods

Stars Stripes Stars

Syd's Too

Go Jump Off A Cliff...

You'll be glad you did.

So this event actually occurred a few weeks ago from today (6/24/10), but it was so much fun that I need to put it in the blog for a documentary of the summer of 2010.

I'm talking about cliff diving at White Rocks aka Triples in St. Paul Indiana. St. Paul is a little town of about 1000 people that's located on the border of Shelbyville and Decatur counties.

Here's a shot of the downtown. This is the post office/liquor store.

White Rock is an old quarry that filled up with water. There are three diving platforms, a 10, 20 and 30 footer, a zip line, and a rope swing. You get to sign your life away on a waiver in the case that something catastrophic happens...danger always makes things seem more fun.

Zip Line

Roll call was Amy, myself, Aaron, Luke, Tessa, Dustin from the Burgh, Nick C., a guy named Scotty, a guy named Cunningham and his girl, and that was it more or less. We packed our coolers (Amy and I went way overboard) with food and drink, spread out some blankets and proceeded to get that special kind of sunburn that you can only get with sun and water.

Amy never learned how to swim properly, and that was going to be a problem since there is no place in the quarry you can stand on your own two feet. We decided that the life vest "diaper" style would be the best option for us. If you've never done this, just put your legs in the place where your arms are supposed to be buckle the vest around your waist and hop in! You bob like a cork with your head and shoulders above the water. It's not comely on the land, but is is pure slacker heaven on a lake or quarry. Check out the photo...I don't know that guy, but Amy would never let me take picture of her like that. I don't blame her, I wouldn't want one of me either.

Well there was plenty of swimming and diving and eating and hacky-sacking. As we were playing some guy said "Hey, 1998 just called and said that hacky sack wasn't even cool back then".

Hilarious.

The highlight of the trip for me though was Amy mustering up the courage to jump off of one of the diving platforms. This was awesome because when we first got into the water, I had to practically pry her off of the pier so we could actually swim. That's my girl!

I hope to get out there once more before summer is over. You should come.