All in, Hendricks County

Provided by Visit Hendricks County

Oh, how daily life can change in an instant.

I’ve been part of an organization here at Visit Hendricks County that for years has focused on attracting visitors to come, stay and play here. But during this pandemic, however long it lasts, we have shifted our focus primarily to you guys – our residents and local business owners. We want to provide you information for all the “good stuff.”

We are calling it All In, Hendricks County, and all our messaging, partnerships, promotions, website, social media channels and frankly our staff’s attention has turned to this new approach.

Do you want to know what is open locally? Are you looking for ideas of what to do at home with your families? Do you just need a good place to take your mind off COVID-19?

VisitHendricksCounty.com is the place to find those resources.

In this time of social distancing, we’ve launched this new section of our website at VisitHendricksCounty.com/community that will bring everyone together. We’ve collected ideas for things to do, places to get food and ways to stay active while over lives are temporarily disrupted. Specifically, we have sections on restaurants, virtual things to do, how to stay active, feel-good stories and links to community resources. 

We have remained in contact with our local government agencies and businesses to provide this community resource all in one place. Let us know if you have additional resources we should post or feel-good stories we can share. We’re all in this together, Hendricks County.

Here’s a summary of what you will find there:

Restaurants

We heard so many heart-warming stories when this all started in mid-March about the efforts and adjustments our restaurants were making once the governor called for the closure of in-person dining and gatherings.

The Bread Basket Cafe & Bakery began taking orders and leaving food on their front porch for pick up and even delivering to residents in Danville age 60 and over. Or how about Rusted Silo BBQ & Brewhouse expanding their services in Lizton by stocking and selling milk and eggs to provide to their small community that lacks a grocery store.

There was and continues to be so much good going on out there that we wanted to compile a list of what all our restaurants are doing that we are updating regularly.

At Home

This page includes everything you need to provide fun activities and distractions at home to help everyone in the family with cabin fever. We have partnered with some of our local businesses and even some of our travel writer friends to develop great ideas.

How about building a cardboard city in your home? Have you thought about participating in a virtual playdate where you can join others online as everyone works on a craft together?  You’ll find that and more.

Active Living

To keep you fit and active during this time of social distancing, we have compiled local online fitness classes and even places outdoors that you can still visit such as our many parks and trails.

The outdoor options especially can allow you to get out of the house and perhaps see a portion of the county you’ve never experienced all while staying safe and improving your mental health and anxiety.

Community Resources

Additional resources will be poured into helping our displaced hospitality workers find new jobs in the logistics sector. While we are experiencing tremendous job loss at our hotels and restaurants, our logistics centers like Amazon and Chewy desperately need more help.

With the announcement on March 19 regarding statewide school closures through May 1, we will work with our school superintendents to be a resource hub for shared activities.

The tourism industry will suffer significantly, and we have also started communication programs to our business owners that rely on visitors to help sustain a profit margin. When the rebound comes, and it will come, we will support those businesses and activities with grant programs, relief loans and marketing dollars to ensure that we still have a great place to visit.

We always say that no one chooses Hendricks County without first being a visitor. They need to love it enough to live here and move their business here. We will be here to make us all continue to love living in Hendricks County.

Around the Community

We have maintained a very active blog for the past eight years that while focused on enticing visitors to come to Hendricks County also evolved into a resource many residents who subscribe to it use to keep updated about what’s going on in our community.

Our Hendricks County Insider blog at VisitHendricksCounty.com/Blog will focus on more feel-good stories and posts moving forward that highlight some of our area attractions and the people behind them. We’ve even partnered with the Hendricks County ICON and Business Leader to re-run some of their past features about local faces of tourism.

If you know of anything or anyone we should feature to showcase the good stuff locally, please reach out to me by email at josh@visithendrickscounty.com.

Ultimately, we want to shine a light on all the good that is happening and provide a welcome distraction. While what we do may not be as vital as health care, we will be here as a beacon of light during this stressful time.

Hang in there and stay safe. We are resilient. We will get through this if we are All In it together, Hendricks County.