Quilt Gardens, RV Museum, New Friends In Indiana

“Quilt Gardens along the Heritage Trail.” I don’t remember ever hearing about Quilt Gardens. It is a quilt pattern block but done in flowers. We first went to the Elkhart County Courthouse here in Goshen, Indiana. No one was around all day and it was a good time to do this trail. 

Kevin immediately recognized the first pattern as Log Cabin. I have taught him well! 😃 It was hard to get a good picture of this quilt garden because we were ground level. Across the street, Kevin puts down the truck tailgate, gets the step stool and has me climb onto the back of the truck to get a picture. Funny thing is, or weird, it looks the same as from ground level. We saw a mural just down the block. 

Then we drove over to Nappanee and there was my favorite one, so far. They had built steps and a platform so you get higher to see. Great thinking! 

Next to Wakarusa. Kevin got out the tripod, set my iPhone in the holder, held it high up above his head, and then told me to use my Apple Watch camera remote to take the picture. So funny…and, it worked! What a guy! It was fun: I like quilts and he likes flowers (we both like both, really) so this was great. We did about 1/2 of the trail and will do the rest when we are in those towns. 

The Historic Goshen Police Booth is octagonal shape and has these words: “Erected 1939 to protect the Maple City from gangsters who might travel along this, the old transcontinental Lincoln Highway.” Really fun to see and read about it! 

Find A Grave: (footnote 1)Clinton Union Cemetery, Goshen, IN. I covered the ENTIRE cemetery and it took several days. I am thrilled. There is a section of older headstones with the words unreadable. This morning we finished it off. I took pictures of most of the unreadable ones and came home (footnote 2) and did detective work. I was able to match some which was exciting. For example, one headstone had readable the death year, the last number of the birth year, a few letters and at the bottom, “at rest.” I put the dates in, found a birth year to match, looked at the husband and saw his also has “at rest” in the same way. Score! HAHA I love it!! I was honored to add 7 memorials, 225 headstone photos and GPS map 55% more then they had before. I even got a lovely thank you for filling one of the requests. 

I got a funny sunburn while at the cemetery. I put sunblock on my face and neck and wore my hat. It was cool in the morning so I had a long sleeve shirt on. I pulled up the sleeves as I was warm. Well, the sunburn is above my wrist and only where I have my hands on the iPhone. So funny! It is fun to see the map of the GPS on Find A Grave website. You can literally see my path! Kevin enjoyed his time on his iPhone going through photos and watching YouTube.

We got some rain starting in the afternoon throughout the night. About an inch. It was funny, I was thinking about tornadoes and how they supposedly sound like a train. Well, goodness, how are we going to know if a tornado is coming because of the trains that are 50 ft away from us and are loud and I feel them!?! I was waiting for Kevin to be off work to tell him that when he texted me the exact same thing: “They say that a tornado sounds like a train approaching. How would I know the difference here?” OH my gosh, we had a great laugh over that and that we thought it at the exact same time.

Our newest friends came back today. They drove from their home to pick up their Alliance Paradigm that was in Alliance shop. They were tired from getting up so early (7+ hours away) so they took naps. We got back together later and she and I went on a walk to look at the Quilt Garden here at the fairgrounds. Later out to dinner and then more visiting outside. Kevin and I talked them in to staying one more night so we could hang out together tomorrow. Love that!

We decided to meet up with our friends at 8:30 a.m. the next morning. First stop was Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee for them and a donut for me. Then on to RV/MH Hall of Fame & Museum, in Elkhart, IN. Tickets are $20.00. 80% of all RVs in the USA are made here in Elkhart area. The large room had RVs and a few you can even walk inside. In 1916 there was a truck that had “telescoping apartment” where the sides would slide in and the back telescope. I laughed thinking that I thought slides on RVs was a new/recent invention. HAHA  

We came upon a trailer with tent-canvas sides that folds out and Kevin said he had a story. When he was little, his parents had a similar trailer. He slept with his parents on one of the fold outs. He wasn’t put on the outside of the bed but inside. Later his parents and much older brothers heard him crying. Where was he? They couldn’t find him. Turns out he had rolled off the bed, and through the canvas and outside onto the ground! What a fright! 

Back home, after rest time, we did a lot more visiting with our friends. We shared ideas and they asked a lot of questions about full-time RVing. We were so happy to share with them. She had mentioned that Trip Wizard (a trip planning website) was confusing her so I offer to show here around the site. She wanted that and we sat in HOWE (footnote 3) and I showed her around and then had her plan a fake trip. She learned a lot, she said. Then we went in their trailer and she showed me Arm and Hammer has what looks like to be dry sheets but they are laundry detergent! She cuts them in half to use in her Spendide washer, just like mine. She gave me 1 1/2 sheets and I am excited to try it. Back outside we watched girls on horses. One lady walked past us and we asked if they were training for a rodeo. We learned they were doing time tests for barrel racing today. Fun to watch. Our guy friend wanted to see our propane fire pit so Kevin had it out and we sat around it. Then Kevin ordered pizza and the guys went and picked it up. Very excellent day. 

Betty, Julia, Shelly, Terry – I thought of you and your bike rides when I saw this at the RV Museum. It is a special painting on the sides of a small trailer. I know you like to ride your bike. 🙂

*The blog posts are taken from my daily travel journal. Would you believe – it takes me a 1/2 day every week to whittle down a week’s worth of journal so it won’t be too long for the post each week. HAHA Thank you for reading!

1. Find A Grave – https://www.findagrave.com/about

2. “Home” is where we park it. Home is our 2022 Alliance Avenue, 36 ft, 5th wheel.

3. “HOWE” is what we named our Alliance Avenue 36-ft 5th wheel. See: Home On WhEels and we pronounce it Howie. We live and travel in it full-time around the country.