Finding Religion at Our Lady of Perpetual Hops
Journal Entry #7
September 22, 2021
We left Bloomington on Monday morning, making our way south. It was a good visit with family and we were both looking forward to getting back on the road. We made our way south, down to a small riverbank town called New Albany on the Indiana side of the Ohio river to have our first Harvest Host experience; overnight camping at Our Lady of Perpetual Hops, a micro brewery just on the outskirts of town. For those who don’t know, Harvest Host is a community of businesses (farms, breweries, wineries, museums, restaurants, etc.) that are friendly to having a small number of rv-ers stay on their properties overnight. Campers like us pay a modest annual fee and then have access to a robust map of hosts across the US, Canada, and Mexico. The rules are that you must be completely self sufficient (no hook ups/bathrooms provided) and that in exchange for a night, you patronize their business (minimum $20 spend). The concept works for us — a place to stay, enjoy a drink and some food, meet people and no drive home- you’re already there!
Our first experience didn’t disappoint. We arrived and checked in at the bar. There were two other HH campers there, a couple from Seattle with a teardrop pull behind and a couple from Montana making their way to Maine. We struck up a conversation with with both; the folks from Seattle, K and V, were spending a month on the road and are actually heading to the same music festival in Nashville that we are attending in a few days. The Montanans were coming North after hearing Eric Clapton in Austin. We talked music and travel routes and vehicles.
The Our Lady of Perpetual Hops is housed in a big industrial building with the large truck bays open to a patio. Inside, the brewing tanks were in full view and the cavernous space had bar tables, dart boards, a pool table and several cornhole courts. We grabbed beers (the beers were great - our favorites were the dunkel and the Oktoberfest) and began to watch the action. We immediately noticed this was no ordinary backyard cornhole. Several of the players had multiple sets of bags and they were really GOOD. Toss after toss in the hole. As it turns out we were watching a cornhole league with several nationally ranked players. We had unknowingly entered the church of cornhole! I had no idea how complex this game was. We spent time talking with a couple of the players who shared that every player selected custom bags with different characteristics such as the size of the resin beads inside the bag, the type of fabric outside, and even the type of grip for the “stickier” side of the bags. They chose the bags to use based on their style of play, their competition and the even the board conditions. One guy mused that inside the building there was easily several thousand dollars worth of cornhole bags. A good set could easily cost $400. These players came with duffels full of bags!
After the game, we grabbed a last beer and headed to our roof deck to watch the sunset. It wasn’t a mountain view- the fact was we were staying in an industrial park! Still, the evening had its own kind of relaxed magic and the sunset was lovely.
The next morning we fired up the induction cooktop for the first time. It worked like a charm. It was fun to rustle up breakfast: eggs, cabbage and onions, and a little sausage to get us started as we headed towards Bardstown to find the bourbon trail.
You will of course be rounding back to NJ with some of that wonderful looking beer? Enjoying watching your adventures!
You can’t say you’ve had the True Hoosier Experience until you drink a hyper-local IPA watching competitive cornhole and enjoying a sunset all in an industrial park. Have fun on Bourbon Trail! Jon S.