Old Farm Houses

Yesterday we took a trip from Crawfordsville, Indiana to the Elkhart/South Bend region of Indiana.  Since my phone allows me to delete toll roads we ended up on all county and U.S. roads for the trip, skipping all the nasty toll Interstates.  It is hard to do but then you get a chance to drive through parts of the country that you would never otherwise see, at a reduced speed.  Sure it takes longer but it is much more fun than flying down the Interstate (not me so much) and looking at bill boards.

Many of the homes along the route are older farm houses with long wide front porches and something that I wasn't quite sure about, two front doors.

The farm house that was part of Mia's family history has two front doors as you can see in the pictures above.  This house was built sometime in the early 1900's sometime after 1912.  It features a porch, long and fairly wide.  There are several reasons offered for two front doors.  One was that the formal entry was one door and the other was a mud room entry.  Others are more plausible.  One door is to the formal entry while the other is to the master bedroom giving the owners opportunity to open doors and windows and with a couple of fans have the equivalent of a poor man's sleeping porch on the long muggy summer nights.  Another is the possibility that the additional door might lead to a bedroom that was rented out.  

Mia and I love looking at these old houses.  There were some small towns along the way that spent time restoring many of the houses and it looked like the people who lived in them to pride in keeping them up.

Today we are going to visit Amish country here in South Bend/Elkart, Indiana.  Since most businesses and museums are closed on Sunday in this region we will try to get as many of those that are open today so we can visit places like Notre Dame and a couple of gardens tomorrow.  Weather will play a factor as we are experiencing rain with thundershowers and very warm and muggy conditions.  Things are expected to cool down on Sunday.

Hope all is well and thanks for stopping by.