This road trip offers travelers a great combination of wonderful scenery, ample amenities and the experience of pure driving pleasure. This route travels along a portion of Route 40 which has been designated as an official National Scenic Byway.
The landscape along this route is dominated by Indiana woodlands, rolling hills, beautiful river valleys and a very large reservoir. You'll also travel through some picturesque old towns with their nice churches and courthouses.
Towns/Cities You'll Pass By/Through
This road trip lies in the central area of Indiana and passes through mostly small towns ... many nice old fashioned towns. Roads were hilly and curvy ... not the flat and straight stuff I'm used to driving up in northern Indiana!
Attractions & Points-of-Interests Along the Way
The towns you'll be traveling through along this route offer a great variety of amenities, restaurants, museums and craft shops. There's an Antique alley at the end of the route with 900 antique dealers lining this section of the highway. Here are the towns and the attractions you'll be visiting along the route:
In Connersville you'll find a wonderful collection of large mansions. On weekends and holidays the town offers a 32-mile long roundtrip ride on an old train along the path of the channel.
Metamora is a small Indiana town that provides great shopping opportunities in numerous stores and shops sprinkled along the streets. You can also take half-an-hour tour aboard a canal boat pulled by a pair of horses.
In Oldenburg you'll see many buildings with tall steeples as well as immense brick structures built by the early German Catholic settlers as a reminder of their native German villages.
Batesville has the quaint Sherman House Inn with a cuckoo-clock-look exterior. This inn offers a great German lunch buffet.
In New Trenton you'll find the Town and Country gift shop in a building that dates back to the early 1800s.
Brookville provides access to the 15-mile Brookville Lake Reservoir where you can enjoy boating, fishing, swimming, hiking and camping.
As you head north on 101 you'll have a chance to visit the Mounds State Recreation Area along with the Whitewater Memorial State Park.
Richmond has a historic district where you can see antique homes, stores and restaurants. US 40, the Old National Road, runs through the city. There's also the Old National Road State Welcome Center that you can visit to learn some facts about the National Road.
Along east central Indiana's Antique Alley is the Historic Lantz House Inn, a famous French-style brick home built in 1823 that operates as a bed and breakfast.