Several Things to Do in Madison County Before You Die

First, some obvious ones:

1. Explore the mounds at Mounds State Park.

2. Attend a high school sporting event, preferably basketball or football.

3. Walk the White River paths.

4. Tour a glass factory in Elwood.

5. Dangle your feet in the water at Falls Park in Pendleton.

6. Savor the collections of the Anderson Center for the Arts and the Anderson Public Library.

7. Visit the 340-year-old oak tree in Orestes.

But these are, as I said, obvious choices. What are some of the others we might miss, if we don’t look closely enough?

1. Goof off around the statues of the Graces in Anderson Town Center, as though you’re trying to pick one of them up.

2. Get 20 friends and their cars and sit in the lot of Gene’s Root Beer off-season – say, in January, during a blizzard – and eat hot dogs with the windows down.

3. Scale the north face of the Eisenhower Bridge. (This may take a few days.)

4. Break your collarbone sledding down the hill at Shadyside Park in June.

5. Hang around the gates of the Nestle plant and eat Hershey bars.