Touring the Monaco Factory

Monday night we had a storm. We were awakened in the wee hours by the window awning flapping and vibrating. We tossed on clothes and ran out to secure things. The air was strangely hot and very windy. And the sky was bright with lightning everywhere! The clouds were roiling like something out of a movie. We got things put up and made it indoors before the rain hit, and it hit hard! This area had 3" of rain in under an hour. There was plenty of lightning and loud claps of thunder, but it wasn't windy enough to rock the rig.

The pets slept right through all of this. Maddy, of course, was oblivious to it all, and Eddie mewed at us only once.

For those of you just joining me, Eddie's our little orange tabby cat. He wasn't amused by our moving out to this RV for our vacation. Nor is he amused by the moving of the walls or the rumbling and changing of scenery as we move down the road. To punish us, he kept us awake by mewing constantly for the first two nights out. But he's been fine since then.

So we awoke and then went to the pool to do our exercise. Michael "jogged" back and forth in water up to his chest, and I swam in the deep end for 40 minutes. It was a splendid workout and we'll do this whenever we get the chance. This is far superior to the scroungy gyms that we found in Richmond. Urgh.

After a shower, we headed south to Wakarusa. Here we toured the Monaco factory, seeing more different components of our RV. (This is the company that made ours.) We also got to tour several of the 2007 models. They always come up with ways to make us greedy. Our tour guide, Julie, was very knowledgeable and competent, making our tour a real joy.

Wakarusa Indiana has a place called "The Dime Store," which is actually... a huge candy store! We had been there before and we knew we wanted to go again for their huge jelly beans. We spent just over $25.


From there, we drove up to Middlebury, to a restaurant Julie had recommended -- the Essenhaus. This is an Amish-style family restaurant, where they pile the food onto the table in bowls, allowing you to eat all you want. Everything was delicious. We thought it was even better than Amish Acres in Nappanee, but we may have to revisit Nappanee to be sure. ;) We did take our pie home from Essenhaus and ate it here last evening. We also bought a few things from their gift shop.

It cooled down a bit last night, so much so that we had the windows open and do still, at 10:30 am!

Hey.. the pool's open and we're going swimming!