Last Friday was a school holiday, so Sara and I checked out Spring Mill State Park for the first time. It's only an hour away, and pretty neat. You're very seldom out of sight of a sinkhole, many of which open into caves below, such as this one a few feet from one of our hikes:




There are five big cave entrances. Most are now closed because of White Nose Syndrome (a bat disease), but there is one where they still do boat tours. It was pretty neat: we saw blind fish (an endangered species) and cave crayfish, and some decent formations:



But the coolest entrance was of a closed cave:






We also visited their pioneer village, with 20 log cabins built between 1815-1830. Pretty fun. But we closed the day with a visit to the best restaurant in town, Restaurant Tallent. It's really expensive, but I've never been to a restaurant that is so inventive, locally-based (food-wise), and yet so uniformly irresistibly tasty.

In fact, I've begun to appreciate all the creativity at work in Bloomington more all the time, now that our wedding is really coming together. I've been really happy with our meetings with Candace, at our rehearsal dinner restaurant; Nick and Ashley, our caterers; Marc (Mark?), manager of our reception space; Alexis, our photographer; and Charlie, our priest. They all inspire confidence, seem to enjoy what they do, and make us feel like we're going to have a really wonderful time.