One more off the bucket list

We made our way somewhere we had wanted to visit for a very long time. Elkhart Indiana is known as the RV capital of the world. According to the locals, more than ½ of all the RV’s manufactured in the world in any given year are manufactured in Elkhart. There are a number of reasons this happened – central location on rail so both supply chains and distribution chains were easy, near the industrial factories on Lake Michigan, and the location of the largest Amish community in America, brining the industry both outstanding woodworking skills for cabinetry and interiors, as well as a competent and hardy workforce. While here, we visited the RV Hall of Fame and Museum, getting to see and even enter vintage RV’s, dating back to when Henry Ford put boxes on the back of a Model T and called it a touring car.

We had our choice of plants to tour, but we chose Jayco since we could make our arrangements online. And, it turned out to be a great pick. Our tour was conducted right on the production floor while assembly was in process. Our group had to move a number of times to allow for an overhead crane to carry a sidewall of floor to the waiting chassis. It may have been the best factory tour we have experienced so far. We learned that 40% of the Jayco workforce was Amish, and over 10% was female. All in all, it was an excellent introduction to Jayco, and RV manufacturing in the US today.

Being in Amish country was an unexpected surprise to us. We decided to do an auto tour of the towns in the center of the cultural region – Elkhart, Nappanee, Shipshewana, Goshen and more. Each of the towns had a historic central district full of brick and stone buildings from the 1800’s. Local crafts and locally grown meat, cheese and produce were sold everywhere. You really can’t do the auto tour in a hurry however. The horse and buggy crowd had the right of way on the main highways.

While touring Amish Country we learned about something new to us. In our various travels, we have always been interested in quilts and quilting. When we were roaming through the countryside in central Ohio, we learned about “Barn Quilts”. Barn Quilts are generally wooden squares or diamonds displayed on a barn that resembles a quilt pattern. We saw them on many barns in that area, and even saw many on display on businesses here. But new to us were “Quilt Gardens”. The Amish apparently will take their favorite quilt pattern, and replicate it in their gardens using various species of plants to fill in the right colors. Ingenious!

After taking in a play at one of the many local Amish dinner theaters, we headed up to Durand Michigan, just a bit west of Flint. Our good friends Ken and Georgia Halloran live there, and we wanted to swing by, grab dinner and catch up on old times. We learned that the publisher of Ken’s book Travel Tales was indicted and is serving time for stealing from his writer clients, as well as other bad things. Ken doesn’t know how much the guy might have pilfered from the sales of Ken’s books, but he assumes it was not just some pennies. Tomorrow we cross the border – yippee!

Talk to you soon.