ALL IN

 

September 6, 2022

ALL IN

The main purpose for my visit to Indiana this trip was to attend a brand new music festival at the Indiana State Fairgrounds called the ALL IN music and arts festival. It is the first truly large scale music festival in Indianapolis and I really wanted to take it in. Especially since the festival was the brainchild of two legendary Indianapolis concert promoters Dave Lucas and Steve Sybesma.

Steve’s daughter, Ashley lives in Key West and we are friends with her and her husband Paul, who were both traveling up to Indianapolis to attend the festival as well.  Lucas and Sybesma and their former company Sunshine Promotions ruled the Indy concert scene throughout my earliest concert going days. I have literally been to hundreds of concerts that they promoted, including the last show they promoted at the State Fairgrounds back in 1988 featuring John Mellencamp and Henry Lee Summer.

They went on to develop and build Deer Creek Music Center, which still is one of Indy’s best concert venues, many years and names later. I still call it Deer Creek. For this new venture they selected the comfortable confines of the fairgrounds which have a lot of amenities perfect for a large music festival including the historic coliseum, ample parking, permanent restrooms, onsite camping, permanent buildings and lots of open space.

I was so excited to get there and experience the event, but I had one stop that I had to make first. As usual, I try and pack as much in as possible to my trips and I was sort of bummed that I was missing another of my favorite annual Key West events by missing Brewfest. The annual beer festival is a great event and to make up for missing it, I found out that there was a small beer festival happening in Greenwood, just south of Indianapolis while I was there.

The Beer and Band Fest was hosted by Greenwood’s Hoosier Brewing Company and featured about 30 mostly Indiana breweries, with a couple from Kentucky at a park near downtown Greenwood. I was on-hand when the gates opened so that I could sample the selection of beers and still get to the fairgrounds at a decent time to catch the first day of the music festival as well.

I even had time to wander the downtown of Greenwood and pay visits to both the host Brewery, Hoosier Brewing and another downtown Brewery, Smocktown Brewery. Neither was too crowded as most beer lovers were at the festival, but it was still cool to see them. I really enjoyed the festival, it wasn’t too packed and the people were all so nice and the beer was great and gave me a chance to try out a host of new Indiana beers. 

I headed up to the fairgrounds and arrived just in time to catch a fantastic set by Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs. Campbell the former lead guitarist of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers is a force to be reckoned with and he lit up the coliseum stage with a blistering set that included a couple familiar Tom Petty hits that Campbell had written as well as a great selection of solo stuff.

I caught a couple of sets on the local Indiana stage including Kara Cole and Doug Henthorn as well as portions of sets by Trampled by Turtles, Samantha Fish and Misterwives before catching the entirety of the main stage set by Portugal the Man. I had seen them previously at ACL Fest and Coachella, but only in small doses and I really enjoyed the full set that I got to see this time.

https://allinfestival.com/

Dear Old Cathedral, here's to you…

 

September 4, 2022


 

Dear Old Cathedral, here's to you…

My visit to Indiana continued the day after I attended the Purdue vs. Penn State football game with a trip to see another football contest involving my alma mater, this time however it was my high school rather than college who was competing. I headed to witness the Friday Night Lights in Northeastern Indiana to the town of Mishiwaka where the Cathedral Fighting Irish football team was taking on perennial state power, the Penn High School Kingsmen.

On my way to the game, I had some time to kill so I stopped at the Potawatomi Zoo in nearby South Bend, Indiana to take a look at a smaller Indiana zoo that I had never been to before. In fact I have never spent much time at all in Northeastern Indiana other than a few visits to Notre Dame a long time ago. I wanted to see something relatively quick and easy to access, so I selected the zoo.

The Potawatomi Zoo is a 23-acre zoological park located in Potawatomi Park between the St. Joseph River and the Grand Trunk railroad in the east side neighborhood of River Park. Founded in 1921, it is Indiana's second-oldest Zoo. It features over 400 animals and is accredited by the AZA and it has over 200,000 visitors each year.

It is a great little zoo, home to approximately 400 animals. Rare Australian animals, large cats and primates are some of the distinctive features of the zoo. The rare and celebrated Edzoocation is the Education Department of the Zoo that offers an array of informative programs and classes for children.

The zoo is in the midst of some substantial upgrades and improvements, yet none of these really impact the experience of visiting the zoo. I really enjoyed the slow pace, small crowd as well as the activity of the animals who were mostly out and enjoying a beautiful early fall day with about perfect weather. The place manages to feel at once nostalgic with its carousel and small train ride, but the exhibits are all up to modern zoo standards with plenty of room for the animals. The staff was especially impressive, first off, unlike many places experiencing staffing shortages, the zoo had an abundance of staff taking care of the animals as well as available to answer questions. I think the number of staff was greater than the number of visitors on the day I attended.

My next stop was at Penn high school for the game. Penn has a rich tradition as a football powerhouse but they have not done well in recent years against my former high school, Cathedral.  My high school has been a major player in high school football in Indiana for 100 years. They have multiple state championships over the years and are currently the two-time defending 5A state champions in Indiana.

They seem to have lost a bit to graduation and moved up to the top level (6A) this year due to their success, so things get a bit tougher. They had already lost a rare regular season game to Brownsburg and were ranked fourth in the state coming in to this game. 

After drubbing Penn the last two years, Cathedral may have been caught off-guard early on as Penn rolled out to a 13-0 lead before the Irish really new what hit them. Cathedral rebounded in the second quarter, scoring a touchdown on a long drive then following it up as time expired on the first half with a hail mary pass that gave them a 14-13 lead at halftime.

The second half was dominated by the Irish who scored a quick 21 points to take a 35-13 advantage before the third string gave up a late Kingsman touchdown for a final score of CHS 35 Penn 21. It was another beautiful night and a lot of fun, mostly because I ran into two of my classmates who each have sons on the current Irish team, so it was cool to catch up.

https://www.potawatomizoo.org/