Carriage RV Park

Sunday we drove the 230 miles from Bloomington, IN up to Millersburg, IN. Quite a difference! From the booming college town of Bloomington of thousands, to the quiet Millersburg with a population of 200 in the middle of Amish country.

We are staying at the courtesy RV park located on the property at Carriage, Inc., the birthplace of our 5th wheel. When we arrived, there was a total of one more rig in the park (which has 20 sites). Last night (Wednesday), we were up to 6 rigs. Looking out today, it looks like it's going to be us and one other rig. We have new friends from Ontario Canada, and Michigan.

Monday night around 9:00pm, while watching TV, Donna said she smelled smoke, so we went outside to investigate. We had heard sirens earlier in the evening, sometime around 7:00pm. Outside, there was a lot of smoke, and we could see fire trucks and the glow of a fire off behind some of the buildings. I thought that one of the local residences had caught fire, but Donna was thinking that it was something at Carriage. She was right; the next day, we found out that the paint shop had burnt down.

We took the factory tour first thing Tuesday morning, and it was lucky that we did. All tours for the remainder of the week were cancelled because of the fire! Before we purchased our rig, we had come to the factory in October 2005 and taken the tour. At that time, we got to meander among several small buildings. There is now one huge building that encompasses the entire assembly process. We were very impressed with the changes.

As far as getting the rig serviced, they do not work on your rig at your site. Every morning around 7:00am, they pick it up, and haul it up to their service department; it's returned every afternoon between 2:00pm and 3:00pm. We've been getting up every day at 5:15am to accomodate the fact that we have to eat, then put in the slides, disconnect, etc. Once in a while getting up that early is OK, but every day? We're retired! Today is Thursday, and the list of things to get completed is dwindling. Maybe it will be done today, but we hope by tomorrow at the latest. There is not a lot to do in Millersburg, especially since it has been raining for 2 days!

Today we drove up to Elkhart, and went to the RV History Museum. The oldest "RV" in the museum is a wooden panel truck, which was hand-made in 1913. Unbeliveably, this rig was found intact in a barn in 1988. The engine actually started up, although it had been stored there for 40 years!! The number of old trailers from the 40's and 50's is quite impressive.

We were just told that there were "severe weather" bulletins issued for Elkart County tonight. Severe weather means T-storms and possible tornados. Great! The Millersburg Fire Department is right around the block, and we were told that they will come over here and warn us if we need to take shelter. We never seem to get away from excitement of some kind!