Lebanon Rest Area Southbound

Ajay E A

By far one of the best Rest Areas. Vending machine has a lot of choices and the place is nicely maintained. Washrooms are a bit old though.

Jesse Kats

This place is gross and the vending machines kinda suck.

Lindsay B.

Nice rest area with clean restrooms and walking paths. (If you play Pokémon Go- which I do- it also has PokeStops and a gym. Great place to take a break during a road trip!) I stop here every time I’m headed towards Chicago. One miss: every vending machine except the one selling water tends to be sold out. In their defense, this rest area sees a lot of people.

Daniel Jepsen

I’m so proud to live in a time when a rest stop can get over 300 Google reviews. Our forefathers bled and died for a society like this, and I want to honor their memory by adding my review to the list. The Lebanon Rest Area Southbound should be on everyone’s bucket list. Oh, sure, other rest areas may have finer amenities, such as working sinks and functioning hand dryers, but in no other rest area will you find the rare combination of historical significance, architectural marvel, culinary variety, and the galaxy-famous Hoosier charm. Let’s start with the historical significance. Immediately next to the parking lot is a very beautiful plaque marking an epoch-shattering historical event. Yes, it seems right at this spot, or at least within five miles of here, The Boone County REMC built Indiana’s first electrical cooperative line to the Clark Woody farm. As a rabid fan of all things related to the Boone County REMC (as well as a closet admirer of Clark Woody; don’t judge), this plaque constituted the highlight of my summer. The architectural marvel is seen primarily in the unique, circular vending building, hovering beautifully just outside the main building like the mole adjacent to Cindy Crawford’s smile. This vending cathedral, with its high style married to bourgeois utility, breathlessly shatters old-fashioned norms of what vending areas should be like, screaming to the world, “You can’t fit me in a box”. It manages the hardest balancing act in all of art: to be both transcendent and transgressive. The world can have Jackson Pollock; just give me the Lebanon Rest Area Southbound vending building. But this building is not just a jewel; it is a jewel-box. Inside are an incredible display of the finest processed foods known to man. Not only are there three (!!!) machines full of carbonated sugar water of various flavors, but also two large and imposing vending machines filled with candy, chips and cookies. Now, I know what you are thinking: “Yeah, that is nothing new”. But you’d be wrong. The variety and choice of the highly processed food is really quite amazing. Not content with the usual Snickers and Lays choices, the caretaker of these machines has added wonders you cannot scarcely find at all elsewhere, and certainly not together in one place. We are talking about things like the Big Texas Cinnamon Roll, Double Salami Sticks, Andy Capp Hot Fries (helpfully labelled as “a corn and potato snack”) and a Cheese Danish able to sit in an Indiana vending machine all summer without getting stale. I’m telling you, you won’t find food like this in Rome or Paris! Finally, we come to the famous, oh so famous, Hoosier charm. I admit, this item is more subjective and intangible. Some people just won’t get it, just like some people don’t like Bach. But to anyone with refined aesthetic sensibilities, it is as plain as your reflection in the stainless-steel bathroom stalls. Let me just give one example as we conclude. Right beside the majestic vending cathedral, you will find two bright blue trash cans. The one on the right is plain and, to be frank, looks like he is not having a great time. And, really, why would he? People keep putting trash in him all day. But the trash can on the left has slots for inserting cans and bottles for recycling. Whoever installed those slots knew what they were doing: they form two bright eyes on the recycling can, giving him a happy grin. This can practically screams joy (he even has his plastic bag positioned to look like a jaunty scarf). The juxtaposition of these two cans makes a profound statement: you can either view the stuff people dump on you as trash (in which case you will be grouchy and miserable) or as things you can recycle into something useful (in which case you will have joy). Shakespeare may have rhapsodized about finding “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, and sermons in stones” but here at The Lebanon Rest Area Southbound, we do the bard one better: we find truth in trashcans.