Escapade Seminars, Amish Barns & Buggies!

We're starting this post with a quick wrap-up of Escapade activities, beginning Tuesday 5/13.  One reason we enjoy the Escapades so much is the learning opportunities at Seminars.  A couple calling themselves "Geeks on Tour" have been at the Escapades for 3 years now and present seminars on all the electronic toys and essentials we all have.   So over the course of the week, we attended 5 Geeks classes--Technology for Travelers, Smart Phones and Tablets, Every RVer Needs a Blog, Google Maps & Cloud Computing. Both Chris and Jim have been computer coaches for many years and have almost all of the answers.  They give a good handout with each seminar and offer a membership for $59 a year that gets you a CD or flash drive with a library of nearly 200 videos on all their classes and also covering software.  We've learned a lot and this year they finally convinced us that we could handle a blog, but it takes time, so we're nearly 10 days behind!

Seminars that we enjoyed during the week were Alaska by RV on your Own (vs going on an RV Caravan), Highway History and Backroad Mystery (a series of great stories of places found on the road), Your Bucket List (putting together a list of places to go and things to do before you both croak!), Basic Genealogy (presented by our Genies group--the questions are always interesting!), My Personal Amish & Mennonite Story (a great presentation by a lady raised Amish but later became Mennonite for more freedom and who answered many questions about the religions), and finally, Escape to Mexico (we, Maryke and Lin, have been presenting this seminar for 3 years and it helps bring in new members to our Mexican Connection/Escapees Chapter 8 Mexico travel group and it's followed immediately by our Chapter 8 Social with chips and salsa, cheese and drinks --we're the Chapter Presidents this year.)

Of course, many other things were happening during the week--we had 510 RVs come to Escapade this year, down from normal.  Tuesday night, we had a Genies Pizza Party that's always fun to talk about our Rally and genealogy research that was ahead of Escapade this year in Fort Wayne.  Wednesday was exciting because after 3 days of heavy rains, our Infield camping was almost impassable with really deep mud. 

Several rigs got stuck and had to be towed out. We called our area "The Swamp!"  Finally the Fairground brought in several big truck fulls of gravel to make the entrance more passable!  Wed. night we had a Silver Bullets (Airstream owners) Social and met a few new Airstreamers.  We organized this group 6-7 years ago and we meet at Escapade and Airstream events. We had a chance to go to dinner with our good friends Anne and Roger Wilson at the very good Hacienda Mexican restaurant in town!   Everyone looks forward to Ham-o-Rama Wed. night! It's like an Amateur Night where Escapees members entertain us in the big hall with music, singing or story telling.  One very pregnant gal had an opera quality soprano voice and sang an aria from the opera Carmen--wow! We had very talented people this show, most pro quality!

On Friday 5/16 we played hooky until 3PM, going on a drive through the Amish towns of Shipshewana and Middlebury. The famous flea market in the first town with up to 800 vendors is only on Tuesday and Wednesday so we missed that, although we visited a large antique market in the same complex.  We went to Menno-Hof, a large visitor center that tells the history of the Mennonite, Amish and Hutterite people that came to the US for religious freedom back in the 1700s.

Barn with buggy and Amish woman

Lots of interesting information and graphic displays of their persecution in Europe and the lives they have built in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, the 3 biggest populated states with the 3 religions.  We visited an Amish cheese factory and bought some of their delicious Swiss cheese. Got lots of photographs of farms and barns and horse and buggies moving about the area.  We got back to the Fairgrounds in time for the Closing Ceremony and final big door prizes--as usual, we got "nada!"

Reflection of barn under blooming apple trees

John Deere alive and well in Amish area

And finally, Saturday 5/17 between 7-9AM was the Escapade "Hitchup Breakfast" with various sweet rolls and drinks and a chance to say goodbye to friends.  Right after that, we took off for a final exploration of the Amish areas, this time going to the towns of Nappanee and Wakarusa, and back to Middlebury.  Wakarusa has an large old 5 and 10 cent store that now sells the biggest selection of candies that we've ever seen!  Bought a bag of Necco wafers--remember them?   We were literally like "a kid in a candy store"!

All these areas are interesting, friendly folks, have good food and lots of photo ops!


In a "grand gesture" the Fairgrounds decided to compensate everyone in the "Swamp" with one night of free camping, and we took them up on it!

Amish don't have telephones in the house--This is a phone on their

property usually near the road they can use and people can leave voicemail messages.

That's how you take your bicycle!

You can even add a "trailer"

This whole Northern Indiana area is home to almost all of the major RV manufacturers. You see lots full of 5th wheels, trailers, park models etc. Many Amish are working here building the interiors.
The Amish have a great work ethic and do top quality work!  There are many companies delivering these RVs all over the nation to RV dealers, and you'll notice many of them on the road with brand new RV's in tow. Drivers with 3/4 and 1 ton pickups are in high demand for this work. Anybody interested....?

A "threefer" with small teardrop trailers

Rows of Ford chassis waiting to become Class C motorhomes at Coachman plant