June 14th through 24th, 2023
We were at the last leg of our whirlwind trip through the Midwest in Nappanee, Indiana. The highlight was visiting the Peruch's in Indianapolis, but the Nappanee trip was mandatory. We were there to go to "Camp Newmar."
Camp Newmar is a term used by many Newmar motor home owners that references time spent at the Nappanee Service Center and Campground. Newmars are all built and "born" in Nappanee, and it's like returning to the mothership. As any RV owner can tell you, the first year of an RV's life is spent fixing a few or a lot of things. It's the "warranty" period where the things that were wrong when you bought it are fixed by Newmar. It's a house on wheels, and there are many parts and pieces that fail with a little road testing. Luckily, we didn't have too many things on our list.
It's called Camp Newmar because they have a campground where you can stay while you get your work done. We chose a spot next to the entrance when we got there, finding our way by following the instructions that were emailed to us ahead of time. It was all very organized. We chose the second site in, giving us an empty site between us and the gate. It was a good plan, and we rarely had a neighbor on our patio side. The paperwork says you can't save your site, but everyone did. We put our dog fencing up. It was the same people through each week, for the most part.
It's not all fun and games, though. We had to be out the door at 6am Eastern Time every morning when our tech, John, showed up to take the coach. He would drive it to the huge bay filled with Newmars and we would walk across the road to the waiting areas. It was really nice where we could wait and Monica could work. The bays were really impressive. It was all free, warranty work though we spent a bunch of money on parts and swag.
We took the tour of the Newmar production line, and that was really interesting. We'd seen the tour online, but to see it all in person and watch them work on coaches was fascinating. It's nice to see how solid and well built they are -- of course, we already knew that because we saw how relatively undamaged our original coach was when it blew over and was totaled. Even though the coach wasn't repairable, we could see that it was still straight and the walls were still in alignment and attached after everything that happened. Newmar builds quality stuff, and we probably wouldn't live in anything else.
Nappanee is Amish Country, and there were horses and buggies everywhere. It also meant there was good food at many restaurants, and we visited a lot of them. Amazing bread!
We took a side trip one day to go to the RV/MH Hall of Fame, a big museum with lots of old motor homes, trailers, RVs, and modular homes on display. We even saw the Blue Bird used and then donated by the Keep Your Daydream family. Cool!
We were also picking up our new enclosed car hauler in Nappanee, but it ended up not working out with the original dealer (we got our money back). At the last minute, we found an even better deal on an ATC trailer that hadn't even been off of the manufacturer's lot -- ATCs are made in Nappanee, too! It's gorgeous and perfect, and now we can tow the car, keep everything else out of the sun and rain, and ride together. It's going to be awesome.
We had a lot to set up with the trailer, yet, but we'd worry about that when we got back to mom's. We got the car secured, though, and that's all we needed for that trip. It was going to be a real game changer, and we couldn't wait to move on. Camp Newmar was pretty cool, but we did a week and a half of it. We were ready to go.
