On Saturday October 19, we packed up the house and headed for Indianapolis. Aside from driving through construction almost the entire way, it was a pretty uneventful drive and we managed to pull into our campground at around 2:00 in the afternoon. We were really excited to arrive so early in the day because it gave us time to get settled, rest for a bit, then head out for dinner and to explore.
The campground was very conveniently located so it was just a quick drive into downtown where there were a ton of food choices for dinner. We decided on The Garage at the Bottleworks. This is a beautiful building that used to be a part of the Coca Cola Bottling Company and has been converted into a fairly large food hall. We tried food and drinks from several local restaurants before returning home to watch movies and snuggle on the couch.
On Sunday, we were excited to find that the Indianapolis Colts had a home game and that we were only about 20 minutes from the stadium. We found some very affordable tickets and headed down to Lucas Oil Stadium for the game. Neither of us are big footballs fans but we are always up for something fun and different to do and, since neither of us have ever been to an NFL game, we decided this was the perfect way to spend our only free day in the city.
We parked about a half a mile away and enjoyed walking through the city to the stadium. We got to see the Soldier’ and Sailors’ Monument in Monument Circle (although we had to keep our distance because of construction) and several other gorgeous buildings.
The stadium was beautiful, too. Lucas Oil Stadium opened August 16, 2008 as the new home of the Colts, replacing the RCA Dome. It has a capacity of 70,000 and has a retractable roof and a large window on one end. The roof was closed while we there there but the window was open, providing a beautiful view of the city and keeping the fans a perfect temperature during the game.
Although the Colts did end up beating the Miami Dolphins, the game wasn’t really what you would call “action packed”. At halftime, they held a short ceremony to induct Dallas Clark into the Ring of Honor and several other inductees were there to celebrate. This is of special note because one of those prior inductees was former quarterback Peyton Manning, who I happen to be slightly obsessed with. I never watched much football but I enjoyed his television appearances and just find him to be an all around cool guy. I even used to have a cat named Jackal Peyton Manning Luke. It was definitely a pleasant surprise to see him there. Overall, we had an amazing time, got to breathe the same air as one of my sports idols, and added a new foam finger to our collection.
We also ventured out one evening to run a few errands and decided to grab some dinner out. We ended up at Ale Emporium where we enjoyed a pretzel with raspberry wasabi honey mustard and some wings. We always enjoy eating local foods so we also had to get the pork tenderloin sandwich, an Indiana specialty.
Unfortunately, this was the extent of our Indianapolis adventure. We only had six days in Indianapolis due to making our next move on Friday so we didn’t have a chance to really get into anything else. It was a really nice, restful week for us and we definitely needed it after our busy couple of weeks in Chicago. We were thankful to be able to head to Nashville feeling refreshed.
