Vista University Inn

Bluespring Caverns

by DSwede

About 30 miles south of Bloomington, outside of Bedford, is the Bluespring Caverns.

The story goes that in the 1940's a local farmer went out to his pond to check his livestock and found that his pond had disappeared. The additional pressure from hard rain was enough for the limestone at the bottom to give way and the pond rushed into the depths of the dark earth.

Over the decades, the cave was explored and the underground river was opened to tourism. It may be closed during times of high rain, but otherwise the tour is a casual drift along a subterranean river. There are some interesting rock formations, stalagmites, and if you are lucky there are blind/albino minnows and crawfish.

1-hour tours are $14 for adults & $7 for children
9am to 5pm
Memorial Day through Oct 31: 7 days a week
April & May : Saturdays and Sundays only

1459 Bluesprings Cavers Rd, Bedford, IN

try the beer or some fish

by gkitzmil about Crazy Horse

This place has a great feel -- the building is really old but the setting is great. Super wine selection and the wine is HALF PRICE on Sunday and Wednesday.
Ask for Kelly and tell her Greg from IU sent you. Kelly, Sarah, and Julie are all very nice Grouper

Bloomington - Home of the Hoosiers

by KrisKaden

"International flair with a small town feel"

I recently moved to Bloomington in October of 2007. As I am originally from the Tampa, Florida area, I was very nervous about living in a "small town." Bloomington has greatly surpassed my expectations, and hopefully I am able to convey what a truly pleasant town this is.

Although Bloomington is what I would consider to be a small town, there is a very big international community thanks to IU. A walk down 4th street downtown kind of reminds me of Brick Lane in London, as the smell of rich and delicious curries fill the air.

"Lots of festivals"

One of the things I have learned during the short time that I have been living here - boy do they love their festivals in Bloomington. The Lotus Festival features great international music, there are art festivals, beer festivals, biking festivals, and even a chocolate festival.

"Indiana University"

The Bloomington campus of Indiana University is one of the most beautiful college campuses in America.

Bloomington-home of my alma mater

by Dabs

"September 2010"

Back in the days before students had their own computers/cell phones/cars/private jets, I spent four years as a starving college student at Indiana University in Bloomington. I'm not overly sentimental about my alma mater, I promptly toss out all of the pleas for cash and invitations to class reunions. But I got a very good education and the campus is the prettiest one that I've seen. I don't think I really appreciated the beauty of the campus while I was at school here, the buildings are mostly built with Indiana limestone and to get to the classroom buildings, you walk on paths through woods with beautiful trees.

My niece is considering IU as one of her choices so we volunteered to take her down to see the campus, my husband spent 7 years at IU and we met up with a former colleague of his who gave us the current perspective as so much had changed on campus.

I lived for 2 years at McNutt, my husband lived for 4 years at Memorial Hall, a lovely building with turrets and leaded glass. Memorial Hall is no longer a dorm but there's talk of turning it back into one.

We did a dorm tour as part of the trip with my niece in September 2010, the dorm rooms look very similar although with high tech conveniences like wifi and cable hookups. The dorm cafeteria, manned by surly woman in fish net caps back in my day, has been replaced by a modern food court. The HPER building where we used to go to swim, run or lift weights is still there but there's also an enormous new(er) facility with all the modern recreational equipment and facilities.

"April 2004"

Our 1st trip back to Bloomington after we both graduated was when we headed that way on a daytrip to West Baden. As we were turning on the off ramp to get to IU, we saw the big sign that said Little 500 weekend this weekend and we both groaned in unison as we had made fun of alumni that returned on that weekend!

But we forged ahead to Mother Bear's to have a pizza, thankfully that had not been closed like our first choice, Garcia's. While watching all of the coeds talking on their cell phones, I was starting to feel really, really old. We jumped into the car anyways to have a trip down memory land and tried to find a few things around campus that had not changed dramatically over the years. On our way back through, we hooked up with Greg (gkitzmil) and his wife who had suggested meeting at Nick's. I was glad that he did because we would have passed it by, this was the place all the alums went on weekends such as Little 500. But we were pleasantly surprised that it was filled mostly with students and we had a good meal.