Week 1 - Year 2 of our Escape from Winter

We left home Saturday, November 5th, after what seemed like weeks of packing, checking lists, more packing, double-checking lists, and still more packing.  The weather was cool and overcast and we were full of anticipation of what this year’s trip would bring us.


This was our second winter of traveling to what we hoped would be warmer weather. Last year, the weather proved to be cooler than we had hoped, we even got snowed in on Christmas Eve in Abilene, Texas, unable to spend the evening with Ryan and Crystal who lived less than 10 miles from our RV park.


Our first day on the road went very smoothly.  We traveled most of the day on Interstates but we got off I-84 in Northern New York and took the scenic Delaware Water Gap road from Matamoras New York to East Stroudsburg, PA.  It’s a bit slower but by this time of the day, we welcomed the slower pace and it’s a good connecting route to I-80 in PA. We spent our first night at Silver Valley Campsites in southeastern Pennsylvania. The second day was spent on I-80 – all day!  We couldn’t find a campground that was open so we spent our 2nd night at a Wal-Mart in Ashland, Ohio.  It was a large Wal-Mart, but we parked in the side lot where it was very quiet. We had a good night’s sleep and were on the road by 9:00 Monday morning.



We arrived in Bremen, Indiana around 12:30 on Monday and went straight to Precision Painting to talk to them about replacing our living room carpet with hard flooring. The next two weeks were spent waiting, first for the flooring material to be ordered, then for it to be installed.

We spent the first week parked at the Newmar Corporation in Nappanee, just up the road from Bremen.  Newmar is the manufacturer of our coach and they offer complimentary hookups for their customers.  We are familiar with the Nappanee area since we spent several days here in April. It’s a very pretty and quaint town, and has one of the largest Amish communities in Indiana. You quickly get used to seeing the horse and buggy teams on the roads and parked at the stores.

We took a tour of the manufacturing process at Newmar, even though we had taken the tour in April. This tour was much shorter than the tour we took in April so I’m glad we had seen the longer tour.  Our tour was on a Friday afternoon and most of the workers had already left for the day. They work in teams and when their work for the day is done, they can go home. The workforce at Newmar is 85% Amish and they produce very high quality coaches.

We spent the second week in a Best Western in Goshen, about 20 miles from where our coach was having the floor replaced. The Best Western allowed dogs in the rooms so that was the deciding factor in choosing it.  All three of us were very happy to be back in our coach after staying in the motel.