Michiana - Goshen Indiana - 6 months "On the Road"

Friday (9/25/15) to Thursday (10/1):

Friday we made the trip from Cicero, Indiana to the Elkhart County 4H Fairgrounds in Goshen Indiana. We checked in with the office and ended up choosing Site 210 (you could choose any site that was not occupied). This area is called Michiana because so many of the roads cross back and forth between the two states. Also a number of the residents live in one state and work in another.

Site 210. We had this area of the campground to ourselves.

The fairground is nice but right next to the railroad tracks.
Trains run 24 hours a day down the track.

The Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale/Festival started at 4:00 PM on Friday and continued until mid-afternoon on Saturday at the fairgrounds. We wandered around the sale/festival on Friday night and ate a fabulous pull pork sandwich.

Full parking lot in front of our motorhome

View down road in front of our RV

Local musicians performed at the festival

On Saturday morning we got up and headed towards the festival again. We wanted to get the pancakes and sausage breakfast, but the line was so long we decided to try the "haystack" breakfast. With a "haystack" they stack biscuits, fried potatoes, sausage gravy, scrambled eggs and cheese on top on of one another to make a haystack. I tried it this way and decided I prefer the old way of starting out with everything separate. Connie had her this way (no haystack).  We went by the quilt auction to see some of the items for sale. The larger quilts can go for several thousand dollars.

Connie in front of a large quilt.

Different patterns used in quilting.

The "quilt auction"

We ended up buying a loaf of zucchini bread and each of us got another pulled pork sandwich for lunch. By the middle of the afternoon the sale/festival was over.

There are 23 miles of walking/biking trails in Goshen. One of the trails started across the street from the fairground and we ended up walking/biking along the trail several of the days we were there. 

On Sunday we ordered a pizza from Massimo's Pizzeria. We got the large size of pizza and it would barely fit through the door of The Duchess. There was an extra large, but I not sure it would have made it.

Is it going to fit?

We got 3 meals out of this pizza.

On Monday travelled over Lambright RV Furniture near Shipshewana to see if they had any dining room chairs for the RV. They did not but Connie was able to visit and thank the salesman at Lambright who recommended the Laser Spine Institute in Florida to deal with her back problems. They discussed their back surgery and he gave her some tips he had learned on how to "wake" up the back in the morning before getting out of bed. He also gave us the name of a local upholstery shop that might be able to work on our existing chairs. We found the shop, Miller's Upholstery, and Mr. Miller told us he could fix our issues with the chairs in a couple of days. So we left the chairs, did some shopping and returned back to the fairgrounds.

On Tuesday we took a tour of the Newmar manufacturing plant in Nappanee Indiana. We had done the tour when we were here last September, but now that we have lived in our motorhome full-time for a few months we wanted to see if there was anything we could learn from seeing the new motorhomes being built. At the end of the plant tour we were allowed to walk through several models that had just come off of the line before they were shipped out to the dealers for sale.

On Wednesday we took a tour of the Entregra manufacturing plant in Middlebury Indiana. The tour lasted about 3 hours and was much more detailed than the Newmar tour. We were impressed with their manufacturing process and the final product looks to be very comparable to the Newmar brand. 

Neither plant allowed any pictures to be taken, so we don't have photos of the facilities. We also picked up the chairs at Miller's Upholstery and were impressed with the repairs he did to the chairs. It looks like we can get a few more years out of them now. After picking up the chairs, we ate lunch in one of the local Amish restaurants. This is what the parking lot looks like at lunch time:

On Thursday morning we got up early and made the 235 mile trip to Lake Leelanau RV Park in northern Michigan. We are here to attend the RV-Dreams Fall Educational Rally next week. We came a few days early so that we can make a trip to Mackinac Island.

We are right on the lake. The wind has been blowing and it is quite chilly here.

Here's to all of our friends wherever you may be.

TODAY IN OUR SIX MONTH ANNIVERSARY OF MOVING INTO THE DUCHESS ON A FULL TIME BASIS. We are still loving the full time RV life style and look forward to what the future holds on our great adventure. We are opening another bottle of the wine we were given as a "bon voyage" gift by our friends, Rhonda, Heidi & Darlene, in Austin to celebrate the occasion.