TheLakeInsiderThe insider's guide to America's luxury lakes
← Patoka Lake
The local guide

Everything worth doing.Within 20 minutes.

Editors' picks across 8categories — the dock with the deepest channel, the winery with the view, the restaurant with the right wine list, the trail nobody's on at sunrise.

The wine

Wineries

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West Baden Springs
French Lick Winery

An award-winning Indiana winery and its Spirit of French Lick Distillery, pouring more than 30 wines with guided tastings — $6 for eight pours.

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The table

Restaurants

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Celestine
The Idle Zone

The full-service restaurant and bar at Hoosier Hills Marina on the lake's west side — the sit-down option for anyone docking in rather than driving the ten miles up to French Lick.

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West Baden Springs
Sinclair's Restaurant

Fine dining inside the West Baden Springs Hotel, beneath the same domed atrium that made the hotel famous — the area's white-tablecloth option, about ten miles north of the lake.

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The outdoors

Parks & trails

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Birdseye
Patoka Lake Hiking Trails & Nature Center

A trail system launching from the state park's Nature Center: the 6.5-mile Main Trail to Totem Rock, a Native American and settler rock shelter; the 2-mile Wildlife Management Demonstration Trail; and The Narrows, a quarter-mile 1800s wagon trail with rock walls carved with century-old initials.

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Saturday morning

Farmers markets

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French Lick
Orange County HomeGrown Farmers Market

A weekly farmers market by the Railway Museum on Highway 56 in French Lick — produce, baked goods, and handmade crafts from local vendors.

The water

Boat launches

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Celestine
Hoosier Hills Marina

A full-service marina on Lick Fork on the lake's west side — boat sales and rentals alongside The Idle Zone restaurant and bar, the alternative to the Newton-Stewart side of the lake.

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Birdseye
Patoka Lake Marina & Lodging

The lake's largest marina, inside Newton-Stewart State Recreation Area — houseboats, double-decker pontoons, and floating cabins for rent, checked in at the on-water Floating Store, which also stocks groceries, bait and tackle, and hot food.

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Iconic stops

Iconic stops

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West Baden Springs
West Baden Springs Hotel

A National Historic Landmark hotel famed for its 200-foot atrium dome, built in 1902 and hailed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" — the largest free-span dome anywhere until Houston's Astrodome in the 1960s.

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French Lick
French Lick Scenic Railway

A historic excursion train run by the Indiana Railway Museum through the Hoosier National Forest and the Burton Tunnel, on trackage the Southern Railway donated when the museum settled in French Lick in the late 1970s.

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