We stayed four nights at Elkhart Co. / Middlebury KOA Holiday while we visited Elkhart, IN, the RV Capital of the World, and Amish Country. We spent several hours at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, looking at their impressive collection of old RVs. It was fun to see some of the early ideas, but really, besides the decor, there were more similarities than not between old and modern RVs.
The next day, we drove to the Grand Design Headquarters to do their Factory Tour. It was super interesting and a bit overwhelming to see their process of building RVs. They have at least 15 huge buildings used to make all the various models. We toured the Reflection building and they happened to be building the model that we own, which was cool. Unfortunately, they did not allow us to take pics, so you’ll just have to go see for yourself one day what it looks like! About half their staff is Amish, so their production hours are early, to give the Amish time to get home to do work on the farm before dark. So, GD is able to do tours in the afternoon without disturbing production. I was surprised to learn that we could call ahead on a day of production and ask if someone was available to take us in the building while the workers were working. That’d be pretty cool to see, too, but they were doing inventory on the days we were there, so I guess we’ll just to go back another day.
Afterwards, we grabbed a treat at Amish Frozen Custard before heading back to the RV.
When I made the campground reservations, I was only planning to do RV related stuff. I didn’t realize how close we were to a lot of Amish related tourism. When I heard the town names, Shipshewana and Goshen, I recognized them from books I had read with Amish characters. So, on our last full day in the area, we went to the huge Shipshewana Flea Market (about the size of 30 football fields). Evidently, it draws thousands of people into town to shop there. We spent a couple of hours walking around all the vendors and ate lunch there. Then we went to the Menno-hof, a museum telling of the Amish, Hutterite and Mennonite origins and lives. It was a really cool museum, with exhibits that were very well done, using multi-media to explain the history — almost as good as having a live tour guide.
Before heading out of Shipshewana, we did a 30 minute Buggy Lane Tours, where an Amish tour guide drove us around in his buggy. We had gotten a kick out of seeing the buggies on the road and parked at Amish homes, so it was fun to get to ride in one ourselves. The Amish guy didn’t really have a tour spiel, but we asked lots of questions and he kindly answered. I was surprised to learn how progressive they have become and how they use a good number of modern conveniences, including electricity! Many of the homes have solar panels that keep batteries charged for running refrigerators and lights. They have propane or natural gas tanks for running their stove and heat. We saw several Amish mowing with gas mowers and farms with bobcats. Still no cars though, or TVs or computers in their homes, which we could probably all stand to do without at least part time!
We drove to Goshen, but most things were closing by the time we got there. And Venturi, the Pizza place that advertised as being “life changing”, was closed for the day. So, we went to Hoppers Pike Street for dinner instead. Not life changing, but good enough. They had some cute frog statues to look at anyway. 🙂
Oh, another thing we did while we were in this area was driving the Heritage Trail while listening to the audio driving tour. We didn’t drive the entire trail, but if we were going in the general direction of any part of it, we’d put it on and follow along. I thought they did a good job with it — using multiple voices and sound cues. Plus some of the information was interesting and a few good tips on things to do. Worth doing if you’re ever in Elkhart County. “Mach’s gut!” (good-bye in Pennsylvania Dutch)
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