Nappanee, IN
In Elkhart County's Amish country. Nappanee is famous for the Amish Acres heritage farm and as a center of Amish furniture craftsmanship.
Lake Wawasee is Indiana's largest natural lake — 3,400 acres formed by glacial retreat — with miles of cottages, summer estates, and a long history as the Midwest's answer to Lake Geneva. The Spink Wawasee Resort (1902) hosted Al Capone, Cole Porter, and Henry Ford. Lake Tippecanoe and Lake James connect the area into a chain of glacial lakes — collectively Indiana's premier lake region. Beautiful from above on a calm summer day, the lakes mirror the sky. Fly low and slow over the chain on a warm afternoon — pure summer.
South Bend (KSBN) was a company town, and two of those stories sit a block apart downtown. The Studebaker brothers started as blacksmiths and wagon-makers in 1852, grew into the largest wagon manufacturer in the world, then made the rare jump from horse-drawn vehicles to automobiles, building cars here until the plant closed in 1963. The Studebaker National Museum has the company's own collection: Conestoga wagons, the streamlined postwar cars Raymond Loewy designed, and the carriage that carried Lincoln to Ford's Theatre the night he was shot, one of only a handful of presidential carriages left. A block over, the Oliver Mansion (Copshaholm) is the 1896 Romanesque stone house of James Oliver, who made his money on the chilled-iron plow that broke the heavy Midwest soils; it keeps its original furnishings nearly intact. This is the South Bend most people drive past on their way to Notre Dame.
The "House that Rockne Built" — Notre Dame Stadium has hosted Fighting Irish football since 1930. The famous "Touchdown Jesus" mural on the Hesburgh Library's south facade rises 132 feet, hands raised, visible from the stadium and from the air. Notre Dame's campus is a postcard from above — the Golden Dome of the Main Building, the stadium, the lakes, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart all visible together. KEKM is the closest GA airport for Notre Dame visits — KSBN is right at the stadium but is a primary commercial airport. Game days are special; the campus year-round is beautiful.
The third-largest Amish settlement in the US. From 1500ft, the landscape transforms into a patchwork of small, immaculately maintained farms with no power lines. Horse-drawn buggies on country roads are visible on clear days. The contrast between Amish farmland and surrounding modern agriculture is striking from above — smaller fields, more diverse crops, and farmsteads clustered closer together. Tuesday and Wednesday are auction days in Shipshewana when the town fills with buggies.