Travel Tuesday, Part 2

Let me begin by saying Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a great time with their families!

Now for part 2 of our Santa Claus, Indiana trip.

After our comical lunch (see last Tuesday's post to refresh your memory), we went to the actual town of Santa Claus. I had visions of a cute little, quaint town. It was nothing like that. It was really a tourist place with the biggest thing being the theme park. The actual shopping area was just a big, modern shopping center with a couple Christmas themed stores (toy, candy, Christmas).

 Santa Claus was originally named Santa Fe. When they wanted to get a post office, there was already a Santa Fe, Indiana, so they had to change the name of the town. While a group of people were debating the name, legend has it that the doors where they were blew open with a gust of wind. They heard carolers and jingle bells. Someone said "Santa Claus!" The rest is history.

 We had to stop by the post office and send postcards from Santa Claus.

I did enjoy all of the Santa statues---as did Butch!

 We visited the world's largest Santa statue---22 ft, tall.

This is the original post office of Santa Claus. We toured the museum behind it. Very interesting.

That evening we were to go to a seafood restaurant overlooking the Ohio River. It was the #2 rated restaurant after the Patio buffet that wasn't all that hot. We didn't really have high hopes, but the views were supposed to be good. Our hopes were dashed when we couldn't get anyone to answer the phone. Butch had made dinner reservations about a month ago. We called all day, but no one ever answered. It's a small, family owned business, so no telling. 

Instead, we went to a place called The Post. The restaurant/bar is located in the old post office of Tell City. The atmosphere wasn't all that great, but the food was fabulous! It was an Italian place. Butch and I shared a salad and the ziti with sausage. It was so much food that we brought the leftovers home an had them Wednesday night. That should have been rated the number 1 restaurant for sure. We're just glad we stumbled upon it!

On Wednesday morning, we had just a few things left to do. 

We stopped at the Christ of the Ohio statue. You can't really get a fix on how big this is. It was erected to watch over the river men.

 The view was spectacular.

Our next stop was to the world's largest Celtic cross. It took us a while to find it because it seemed to be in a junk yard. There was so much junk everywhere. Sort of embarrassing, really. If tourists are coming to see this, why wouldn't they clean it up?

 You had to walk down a steep path in the woods to get to it. I looked on from above. It was pretty cool.

The last thing on the list for this area was a pretty cool covered bridge. This was actually still in operation until 2004. Butch and Walter found a geo-cache here as well as all over the places we'd been. That's half the fun and often our motivation for visiting unusual places.

We headed back to Evansville on our way home. The guys got to tour the LST while Chris and I just chatted. I've seen enough ships. 

We found a really cool place for lunch.

 It was called Waltons and housed in an old motor works factory. The old truck is actually the patio bar. The antique car grills are authentic from when the factory was in operation.

The inside was so eclectic and decorated with all kinds of old stuff that was actually for sale. There were outboard motors, fire hydrants and a huge collection of globes. And to top it off, the food was very unusual, but delicious! Butch had a Rueben sandwich that had Brussel sprout kraut! I went for the soup and salad bar. It was a great end to a really fun trip in the middle of December amidst the hustle and bustle of the holidays. 

We had such a good time that we've decided that we're going to do something like this every December! 

If there's a negative, it would be that I was unable to get my Indiana Starbucks mug for my collection. There just was only one Starbucks in Evansville and none in those little towns. Oh well, I'm sure we'll be back in Indians sometime. It's a big state!