Bedford makes a good base for exploring the karst country of southern Indiana. Spring Mill State Park, the Bluespring Caverns, and the Hoosier National Forest are all within a half-hour drive. Bloomington, the university town and home of Indiana University, is forty minutes north and worth a day for its bookshops, art museum, and lively student-town restaurants.
Louisville and the Kentucky bourbon distilleries are about an hour and a quarter south. French Lick, with its grand resort hotels and natural mineral springs, is about an hour west and a strange, almost Gilded-Age survival in the middle of rural Indiana.