Out of Kentucky Into Indiana

On the road again still moving northward. Before getting out of Kentucky, we stopped at a Costco at Louisville to stock up. We're pretty sure we won't see Costcos in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan where we will spend more than two months.

That's our camper parked at the end of the walkway. Always fun to put the groceries away in the parking lot.

We stopped for one night at a small City Park campground in Edinburgh, Indiana. We had a nice riverside site with electric and water hookups for only $30 a night. The campground had a dump station, too. We took a little walk along the river and just relaxed. We were back on the road the next morning.

From our walk on the river. That's our camper in the trees.

From our campsite, we could see people fishing on the river.

Our next stop was at the Elkhart, Indiana KOA campground, an unusual campground choice for us. KOA's are generally pretty good, but they are too expensive for us, often with sites close together. The extra cost pays for game rooms, planned activities, pools, pickle ball courts, etc., things we never use. We chose this one because it was very close to the Grand Design Factory that built our camper where we had a tour planned during our stay there.

First, we had a serious issue to deal with. As we were setting up and leveling the camper, we lost all power to the camper--AC and DC. He found one wire loose--the roads are extremely bumpy up here--and that brought the DC system back up. He then found the charger/inverter was completely dead. Since all the power runs though that equipment, that meant we had no AC system to run the air conditioning, and it was very hot that day. He got on the phone with eTrailer, the company we bought the charger/inverter from in April. They put n order in for us as it's under warranty, but we had to send it to our next campground stop in Michigan. To get the AC power and air conditioner going, he did some rewiring to bypass the charger/inverter. I'm sure happy he knows how to do all that, because a camper becomes an oven in hot weather. I had to make only one run to a nearby Ace Hardware for him to get it going. The only downside with that fix is that only the solar would be charging the 12 volt system, but we have plenty of panels to keep the batteries charged and really long days up here.

Working through the troubleshooting.

With the power back on, we were in the cool again. Our tour was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. the next day, so we spent the morning at the Shipshewana Flea Market and driving around the area admiring the beautiful Amish farms.

Rows and rows of flea market stuff. All we bought were tablecloth holders for picnic tables. $6 total.

We joined three other Grand Design camper owner couples for the tour with Brian from their Sales Department. What a treat it was to see the "guts" of the campers being built! And Brian was a wealth of information as he had worked in the factory, served as a Quality Manager before moving into sales. With no production going on at the time, we were able to get up close and personal with the entire process. The production runs from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. as the majority of their employees are Amish and also farm for the rest of the day. Interesting that they accommodate the community this way! Now we know why our cabinets are so well built, unusual from most campers.

Grand Design Corporate

We were limited to what areas we could photograph, of course.

Each camper moves sideways on a trolley as the specializing team completes their portion of the build. 

A little difficult to see, but we were able to view how each roof was put together at each stage. Very interesting!

We came away satisfied that our Grand Design camper is well built and still very pleased with it. We spent another night at the KOA, then the next morning got back on the road again heading north.