Our tour of the Coachmen factory was not until 3:00 pm so we just spent the day in Rover catching up on our homeschooling. Our guide for the Coachmen tour was a 20 year old summer intern who had been working at Coachmen for two months. He knew practically nothing about Coachmen and even less about motorhomes. However he was nice took us through the Coachmen Class C motorhome production line where we got to see how the motorhomes were being built. We were not impressed by the factory. It was dirty with lots of debris on the floor, we even found a screw imbedded in the tire of a newly built motorhome. The parts were haphazardly placed and the assembly line seemed disorganized with some more completed units in front of less completed units. As Coachmen owners who loves their motorhome it was very disappointing to see the slipshod way factory was run especially compared to the Thor factory. I was so disappointed that I wrote an email to the President of Coachmen RV describing my experiences.
After our factory tour we went to the local supermarket to get some groceries. There we found that the businesses and stores in Middlebury had an unusual feature, a hitching post for horses. Elkhart and Middlebury have a large Amish community who still travel in horse and buggies and we would often see them around town. It is said that many Amish work in the RV industry building RV’s, taking pride in their craftsmanship.
Being in Amish country we had to try Amish food so we went to Das Dutchman Essenhaus, an Amish restaurant. The food was very good but very American standard. There was salad, mashed potatoes, noodles, macaroni and cheese, shredded beef, pork and turkey and fried chicken. The dinner rolls were soft and delicious.
Stuffed full we returned to the Coachmen RV campground for the night.
The next day we went to a local swimming pool to hang splash around for the day. At only $3 a person it was a really cheap day’s fun and excellent way to stay cool.