Another day at South Bend, In

Going up to the front door of Copshaholm

Grounds of Copshaholm. 

We started off the day by going to Copshaholm again, this time to take the tour of the grounds and to take the tour on the inside as well.    Once again, we were impressed with not only with the mansion, but the portrayal of the family by the tour guide.  It simply amazed me that the family had no compunction with leaving so much of their stuff in the mansion when they moved out.  At the same time, there are no substitution articles inside, or donated articles from another collection somewhere that would've been used to make the mansion seem authentic because it already was and is authentic.  Our tour guide was very informative and told us more than just about the mansion, telling us about the various stages of the Oliver company from its beginning in 1855 until it was shut down in 1985.  Due to the length of time since I heard what was said by the tour guide and because Wikipedia has much more detailed information, I suggest you look at their article on the Oliver Farm Equipment Company as it will tell you pretty much the whole story.  Our time there was a good way to spend the morning.  

Katie trying to hide the satisfaction of
eating a really good polish dog at
Sweet Creams Soda Shop.

One of the reasons we went to Indiana was to see Elkhart and the area around Elkhart, which as most RV people know, is the RV manufacturing capital of the world.  I don't know how many are still there right now, but it's less than there were before the last recession which hurt the RV industry hard.  A lot of Elkhart is still in bad shape with an unemployment rate of 9.3% as of April of 2012 per the Department of Numbers website which is down from over 18% in 2009, but obviously nowhere near what a manufacturing mecca should be.  We went downtown where there were many empty shops which may have been caused by the recession, or could've been caused by the fact that the main road had been under construction for many months.  We found this out first hand when we visited the Sweet Creams Soda Shop in downtown Elkhart.  Deb, the nice lady that runs the shop, was kind enough to fill us in on all the happenings in the area, and show us around her shop which had a host of other activities in it.  I've urged readers to do things before, I urgently urge readers to visit  this shop if you're in the Elkhart area, you won't be disappointed.

With Elkhart being the RV manufacturing capital of the world, it would make sense that there would be a museum there dedicated to RVs.  It's the Recreational Vehicle and Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame and it contains lots of exhibits as far a recreational vehicles (travel trailers, popup trailers, and motor homes.  Another thing to checkout if you're in the area.  The link above takes ya to their website which shows a lot of the exhibits there, so it'd be something to checkout before you go to give ya a heads up on what to expect when ya get there.

The RV/MH Hall of Fame.  Check out the Elk in
front of the building.  There were lots of these Elks
all around Elkhart, each painted differently.

Beaver Ridge Family Campground
in September.

See the nice campground?
  The moho took us here!

I don't think I've included pictures (probably because I hadn't taken any before) of the campground we were staying at, so here are a couple of them.  Mind you, this is near the middle of September and that's why there's so few other campers in the campground.  It was a very nice place, but it was the first place that we learned that some campgrounds affiliated with Passport America (PA) only allow for a short stay so people won't take advantage of the low rates that are offered thru PA for stays longer than 2 - 3 days.  So our stay was only three days, and we were happy to have had the opportunity to stay there.  But before our departure from Beaver Ridge, we went to the Newmar RV factory in Nappanee and took the tour.  Had a great time, learned a lot of stuff about Newmar and how they're made, and met some really nice people.  The best part was that they would allow people to stay right by their factory for free!  That's right, free!  They had water and electric only, but we're in a self contained rig, so how big of a deal is that?  Guess where we decided to stay at next!