Amish Country Blog

The ECCVB has long recognized the importance of cultural and heritage travel and developed the Heritage Trail to increase visitor volume, diversity, spending and economic impact for the entire destination. It’s the cornerstone for many programs. The nationally recognized route, along with a self-guiding audio tour, takes visitors into the downtowns of our cities and towns and along country roads introducing them to the area’s history, heritage, and people while directing them to must-see attractions. It’s dynamic; it’s popular; and it’s free. In 2009 alone, we’ve distributed over 3,200 Heritage Trail CDs. Add to that over 3,000 audio downloads from our website. When you consider our average visitor spends $52 per day and stays 2.8 days, then multiply that by an average 2.5 persons per vehicle, the economic impact of heritage travel is significant

-Diana Lawson, FCDME, ECCVB Executive Director

Have you driven the Heritage Trail Audio Driving Tour? Leave a comment and tell us about your experience.

Beautifully crafted products are a tradition in Amish Country, and the best way to find hand-crafted artistry is by traveling the Heritage Trail.  This self-guiding audio driving tour is designed to let you explore at your own pace, get behind-the-scenes glimpses of Amish life and direct you to all the major attractions so you don’t miss a thing.

And we’ve made it easy to find some of the area’s most talented artisans along the way. Just watch for businesses that post the Heritage Trail Artisans sign. From fine arts to fine crafts, these signs will lead you to delightful discoveries, one-of-a-kind works and give you the chance to meet friendly, talented artisans eager to share their unique stories.

I’m starting to see people coming back to Amish Country.  The pace is picking up in the Visitor Center and the  Heritage Trail driving tour CD and map are popular.  It’s fun to watch! I have a few things that I need to tell you about Amish Country before you come to help make your trip a little easier.

First is that you need to begin early and stop early.  Amish Country is a farming community at heart, and we get up with the sun, and close down as the sun is starting to set.  If you want to visit shops, or visit businesses, or go to a museum, plan your day for a 9am to 6pm.  You can always start earlier, but just keep that 6pm close time in your mind.  Restaurants do stay open later.

If you want to learn about the Amish, the best place to go is Menno-Hof in Shipshewana.  They are dedicated to telling the Amish and Mennonite story.

Great food is abundant in Amish Country.  Pack a cooler so you can keep all your food purchases fresh. Driving the Heritage Trail is the best way to take in Amish Country, and it takes 3 and a half hours if you follow the audio tour and don’t stop.  It will take most of your day if you want to make stops…and well worth it!  You should plan on making at least a few stops on your way.  And don’t forget to bring your camera.  There are lots of great photo opportunities in Amish Country.

So have fun when you’re out and about in Amish Country, and I hope you enjoy your stay.

Have you driven the Heritage Trail audio tour? Let us know. Leave your comment

Mindy, Amish Country Northern Indiana Contributor

My husband and I got married in November of 2007, so we’re the young, fun newlyweds   We’re always ready for an adventure – whether it’s planned or not. My husband absolutely loves history, so when I suggested driving the Heritage Trail on a beautiful, sunny Saturday – he was all for it! Little did he know, I was determined to eat my way around Amish Country! We started bright and early (8:30am) in Downtown Goshen infront of the Goshen Chamber. Starting the Heritage Trail in any city using the track numbers on the back of the CD was very easy! We just parked our car in front of the Goshen Chamber, facing south, and went to Track 5 on the second CD. 

Helpful hint: If you are not quite sure of how the Heritage Trail works, it’s best to either start in Elkhart at the Visitors Center or listen to the first two tracks of the first CD – these two tracks give you an introduction to how the trail works, what you’ll be doing and seeing and also familiarizes yourself with the different tones used throughout the CD.

Heading out of Goshen on SR 119 is very scenic, but I was looking most forward to getting to Amish Acres where they have a bakery, a meat & cheese shop, and a soda shop & fudgery. We got out of our car and you could instantly smell the bakery. The bakery bakes everything daily for both the Restaurant and the things for individual sale. They have the best hearth bread (we bought a loaf to take home) and you can also get jars of jam, noodles, cookies, pies, and more!  We also popped over to the meat & cheese shop to get a huge dill pickle to go for our next little leg of the Heritage Trail.  

Helpful hint: At this point, we wish we would have brought a cooler. If you think that you want to buy any of the great meat or cheese products anywhere in Amish Country (and there are a lot of places to buy such things), invest in a cooler! You can purchase a cheap cooler or an insulated bag at any local grocery store.

Our next stop was in Wakarusa at the Wakarusa Dime Store – home of the jumbo jelly bean. These things are huge! The best part is that you can taste every single flavor of jelly bean they have! My favorite flavor is plain cinnamon, but if you can’t make up your mind they have awesome little mixes with really interesting names like “Colors of a John Deere”, “Colors of International Harvester”, “Love Potion Mix” and “Panther Chow”.

After filling up on jumbo jelly bean samples at the Wakarusa Dime Store we headed north on SR 19 to American Countryside Farmers Market. The Farmers Market has limited hours (Thursday 8am – 4pm, Friday 8am – 7pm, Saturday 8am – 4pm) so Saturday mornings are always busy. We arrived around 10:30am, and ready for lunch!  There is a great selection of food, whether it be fresh meat to take with you and grill later (if you have a cooler, I recommend the pulled pork from Mattern’s Countryside Meats), fresh produce or something from their food court. My husband decided to get a buffalo burger and fries from Buffalo Pete’s and I went with a softshell taco, rice and beans at Mi Casita.  Yummy!

Both my husband and I agreed that our next “must-stop-at” place along the Heritage Trail was the Das Dutchman Essenhaus – mainly because of their great pie but also because they have beautiful grounds to be able to get out, walk around and stretch your legs (and let your stomach have a rest!).  I had originally really wanted to get here for lunch to enjoy their family style traditional Amish dinner, but since American Countryside Farmers Market was just too appealing, we just stopped by the bakery. It was such a beautiful day outside (and really one of the first summer-like days all year), it was certainly no disappointment to stop for any reason! Inside the bakery there were tons of freshly baked breads, cookies, jams and jellies, and donuts in addition to bagged noodles, apple butter, Amish peanut butter, cookie cutters in every shape and size and more. Even though I should not have, I picked up a couple of cinnamon rolls for the drive (because obviously I hadn’t had enough food for one day!).

The Das Dutchman Essenhaus grounds are HUGE, with lots of open space, a little craft village, a hotel with a conference center and even a little covered bridge that you can see while taking a buggy ride or just taking a little stroll around the property. Not ready to get back into the car yet – and a little full from all the great food finds we had – my husband and I wandered over to the front of the Inn and Conference Center to look at their Quilt Garden. The Das Dutchman Essenhaus is just one of the 23 different quilt and garden sites along the Quilt Gardens Tour – and they really outdid themselves this year! Even my husband had to admit, the garden was very cool – and he’s much more of a history guy than a flower fan.

After leaving the Das Dutchman Essenhaus, it wasn’t long before our drive took us right past the Deutsch Kase Haus.

The building was a simple but nice place, with a store in the front and the cheese factory in the back. They actually have windows inside where you can see the big tanks of curds and wey being made into cheese, just like my husband and I have seen on Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. (Sadly however, Mike Rowe was nowhere to be found!!). The coolest thing there was that not only do they have a million different kinds of cheese available, but you can sample each one. They have these little containers by each variety with toothpicks. Grab a toothpick, spear a cheese cube and sample away.  My favorite was the habanera – very hot and VERY good!  My husband has a little less boring set of taste buds and went with the bacon cheese. The really cool thing about the Deutsch Kase Haus is that they sell the things to go along with cheese – we also bought crackers, summer sausage!  They even have knives (good ones, not plastic) that you can buy for a dollar! 

Helpful hint: Get the knife, you’ll be too tempted in the car with the cheese to not dig in … and it’s not as appetizing when you have to rip it apart.

After leaving the Deutsch Kase Haus, we were headed to Shipshewana. There are a lot of great places in Shipshewana to eat, but unfortunately I too full to eat anymore (disappointing!).  JoJo’s Pretzels in the Davis Mercantile is a must-not-miss place!  They have freshly made, handrolled pretzels with a wide variety of toppings. 

Helpful hint: make sure leave room for a pretzel – I wish I did – and try the sour cream and onion topping! It looked delicious!

The next few miles of the Heritage Trail had absolutely amazing scenery – a must-not-miss on the Heritage Trail! We passed the sign for Yoder’s Popcorn – a personal favorite of my husband. We had already decided that we wanted to eat at the Olympia Candy Kitchen in downtown Goshen, and since we (well, mainly I) spent so much time other places, we were on a slightly strained time budget. We parked our car on Main Street in downtown Goshen, right infront of the Courthouse, and walked to the Olympia Candy Kitchen. The lunch rush had subsided it appeared, and we were able to get a table right away. This place definitely looks like something out of a movie, with a long lunch counter, old dark wood candy display cases and even a punched tin ceiling. They have the best hamburgers and french fries, but I really recommend the chili. I love chili – of all sorts – and this is definitely at the top of my list! When we were leaving, we raided the front counter and bought a huge assortment of chocolate goodies:  a few turtles, lots of chocolate covered raisins, turtles and my all-time favorite chocolate marshmallows. 

Helpful hint: You can also buy any of the candies for sale at the Olympia Candy Kitchen online at OlympiaCandyKitchen.com – this is great because you always think that you brought enough home to share with friends – your friends will think you have great control and didn’t eat it all – they’ll never need to know you did!

I’ll be writing more in the near future about all of the other great things we saw and did along the Heritage Trail Audio Driving Tour – the Amish scenery, unique finds, quirky places and of course the all-new Quilt Gardens Tour! Make sure to leave some comments on the blog when you try some of the places to eat along the Heritage Trail! Let me know what you liked, or where you think my taste buds are crazy!  Hope to hear from you soon!
- Amanda Eckelbarger
Marketing Assistant, Elkhart County CVB
Young Couple Travels in Amish Country