Old stores, tack and geocaching, all in one day

Carol and I had planned to go to the Waltzing Horse Farm so that she could ride Mystique and I could take pictures, but when I called her this morning and we discussed the cold temperatures, we decided that it was TOO COLD to do that today. She said she still wanted to go out, and asked what I could come up with. I did some fast thinking and remembered the old general store in North Brookfield that I found on my way home from Lockport a while back. Then she suggested that we also go to to the tack shop in Brookfield. I quickly located my Madison County map and found information for a geocache in Hubbardsville and we met up in New Berlin and headed towards Brookfield. We found the tack shop (Taylor's Tack and Field) and Carol brought some leathers, and then we headed towards Hubbardsville. It took us a while since we made a wrong turn, but we finally found it. We located the HUBBARDSVILLE MALL, which is really a convenience store that serves some food items. It also has a post office! There was a picture of the store that originally stood on the same spot before it burned down. Here it is: The postmistress told us that the Hubbardsville Post Office is not on the list for closing, and that they are crossing their fingers that it will be able to stay open. The other name for the HUBBARDSVILL MALL is COUNTRY PEDDLAR and they offer subs, wings, pizza, burgers and deli sandwiches as well as fried seafood. We decided to wait and have lunch in North Brookfield. On the way out of Hubbardsville, I stopped to take a picture of a historical sign for a schoolhouse, and the fire station, and also to find HUBBARDSVILLE BELL, a geocache hidden right outside of the fire station.

We drove to North Brookfield and found Kling's Mills. The store is way down at the right hand side of the old mill building. We decided to have lunch there. Carol had a hot turkey sandwich and tomato soup and I had the special of the day Sloppy joe and french fries. We each had a piece of pie.....I had banana cream and Carol had Coconut Cream. The food was good but the pie was OUTSTANDING! We decided that we need to return JUST to get more pie.

March5_2012 031, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

We headed south on 12 to Sherburne and then on to New Berlin, where I dropped Carol off at her car and headed home.