Early June, 2009 - We left the Detroit area for a southern loop tour. We drove along the Ohio shore of Lake Erie, headed over to
Elkhart, Indiana and came up along Michigan's southwest coast before returning to Detroit. In the midst of our seven week hiatus
from living in our trailer, we found it odd and fun to be traveling by rental car and motels for a change. We hadn't lived out of a car
with a cooler in years. Mark got a kick out of driving the tiny Hyundai Accent, as it could turn on a dime and park anywhere, quite a
contrast to our Dodge RAM 3500 long bed truck which needs almost four lanes to do a U-turn.
Our first stop was Marblehead Lighthouse outside Sandusky with views
of the Cedar Point amusement park across the bay. It is nestled among
some wonderful flat boulders that stair-step their way to the lake. Built in
1819, the keeper decided to put his home a full 2.5 miles away. Every
night he had to get over to the lighthouse to light 13 whale oil lamps and
then return in the morning to extinguish them. What a hike!
Along the shores of Lake Erie, we stopped for an ice cream cone at the
Dairy Dock in the little town of Vermilion. After licking our way to bliss at
their picnic benches, our hearts stopped when we discovered we'd
locked the keys in the car. Within five minutes the ice cream shop had
called the cops and a cruiser had arrived to unlock the car for us.
Incredible. The cop wouldn't even accept an ice cream treat from us,
though he said it was his fifth keys-locked-in call of the day.
I had heard much about Oberlin College in my student days, and when I
saw it on the map we made a quick detour. The town and college have
grown up as one, both intimately integrated. We spent a happy few hours
wandering around, then stopped in at the admissions office to look at a
course catalog. No such luck: today's students just go online.
We had driven along Lake Erie to visit the Tartan sailboat factory. Tartan
is a highly respected, expensive brand that is nice to admire if a friend
owns one but requires exceptionally deep pockets to buy. So it was a bit of
a shock to see the drab little factory building that didn't even have a sign
out front other than a small cloth banner. There were just a few boats
being built, and they had started taking in refurbishment projects to keep
everyone employed. However, a big highlight for us was seeing the 53'
yacht they were just completing. To the tune of $1.4 million, some
fortunate soul would soon take delivery in Florida to sail it through the Caribbean to the South Pacific.
We cut across Ohio to Elkhart, Indiana, the heart of the RV industry, or
at least home to the vast majority of RV manufacturers as well as the
RV/MH Hall of Fame. We had heard rumors that Elkhart was really
suffering because the RV industry had taken such a beating in the past
year. However, a stop at McDonald's revealed the most upscale version
of that fast food joint I've ever seen. There were several very large flat
screen TVs hanging on the walls, like a sports bar, comfy couches, and
an enormous two-sided fireplace that filled the center of the restaurant.
If Elkhart was suffering now, it had certainly known some extremely flush
times in recent years.
We spent an afternoon at the RV/
MH Hall of Fame. It sits on a huge
piece of beautifully landscaped
property and has a long manicured driveway leading up to a striking, modern building. I was
so impressed with the fountain showing off the building's glass windowed facade that I
jumped out of the car to take a photo. Only after I hopped back in and we parked did I
realize that the side that impressed me so much was the back side. The grander entrance
was on the other side in the front! The building is a rotunda with fountains on both sides and
there are towering plate glass windows looking out at the pretty acreage all around.
A very friendly fellow greeted us,
explaining what we'd see inside.
He stood next to a podium
displaying an issue of Escapees
Magazine which had featured a
review of Al Hesselbart's book
"The Dumb Things Sold...just like
that!" Apparently there was some
surprise among the RV industry's
founding fathers that America
would take to life on the road and become so enthusiastic about
camping in towed and driven vehicles.
A picture on the wall showed a 1930's era couple happily driving
a convertible pulling a trailer.
Just beyond that we turned a corner and stepped onto the
"Road Back in Time," a clever, charming and informative display
of trailers and motorhomes from the 1910's to the 1970's.
This museum puts you in the
driver's seat (and there is a
crazy one that was a $35 option
in a 1929 "housecar." It looks
more like a living room reading
chair than a driver's seat). You
can walk into most of the trailers
to get a good look.
The 1913 "Earl" Travel Trailer (towed
by a 1913 Model "T") is the oldest
travel trailer in the world.
The table seats four and folds down into a
double bed, with storage under the seats.
This unit was custom made by a Los
Angeles carriage maker for a CalTech
professor and was quite upscale.
In contrast, the homebuilt 1916 Cozy
Camp Tent Trailer looked like all it did
was get your bed up off the ground.
Under the wooden wagon box were
wooden spoked wheels. These didn't
last long and manufacturers quickly
switched to pneumatic tires.
The idea of a small towable box that
popped up and popped out, like a
modern popup tent trailer, seems to
have been common even before
World War I. However, unlike the
modern descendants of these rickety
looking canvas popups, the beds opened to the sides of the trailer rather
than popping out of the front and back.
Of course today's popups feature hot and cold running water, propane
stove and refrigerator, air conditioning, forced hot air heat, and
sometimes a small toilet and shower. The ancestral popup featured two
twin beds, some small screen windows and little else. But I bet they
faced fewer crowds and had just as much fun as we do today.
The 1932 Gilkie Kamp
King Tent Trailer had a
pass-through ice box
and pantry shelves on
the front of the trailer
so it could be
provisioned whether it
was open or closed.
Gilkie was one of the
first trailer builders
based in Indiana, and
this particular one was
used by its owner from
the 1930's until 1988.
"Hard sided" trailers were popular
too. The 1935 Covered Wagon
Travel Trailer is boxy looking from
the outside, but what storage
space inside! All kinds of drawers
and cabinets for those camping
essentials. It was built by the
largest manufacturer of that time.
They turned out 45-50 trailers a
day from a single plant! The
exterior of this trailer is "genuine
leatherette" over a thin layer of
plywood, and the roof is coated
canvas stretched over tar paper.
The 1955 Ranger Crank Up
Trailer looked like a cross between
a popup and the modern HiLo
series of trailers. This trailer
model was the first one to use
fiberglass for the sides. It also
featured a bed that extended out the back, which the company described
as a "slide-out." They were the first manufacturer to use that term which
is so common in all RVs today.
The next trailer got Mark smiling: "My dad had one of those!" It
was a 1954 Shasta 15' Travel Trailer.
When I peaked inside I tried to imagine Mark's mom making meals
in there and Mark and his sisters sitting at the little table.
It had a gravity-fed water system that had a reservoir in the cabinet over
the sink and a small hose leading into the sink.
The 1967 19' Winnebego Motor Home looked like some of the
rigs we'd seen on Shelter Island in San Diego a few months
earlier. It was the first of the 6-cylinder Ford chassis based
motorhomes and, priced at $5,000, it kick-started the
motorhome industry.
Once through the "Road Back in Time," we moved on into the Ingram
Hall of Fame. This is a special exhibit area that features the antique RV
collection owned by "Boots" Ingram, founder of Teton Homes (which
until last year produced ultra high end fifth wheels) and his wife Betty.
Each unit is one-of-a-kind and has a unique history.
Perhaps most
interesting was
Mae West's
chauffeur driven
Housecar,
custom built to
take her to and
from the movie
sets in 1931. It was offered to her by Paramount Pictures as an enticement
to get her to leave the Vaudeville circuit to make movies. It was intended
as something of a moveable lounge, equipped with an icebox and hotplate
stove for making tea, and it carried a rocking chair on the "back porch"
where she could enjoy the breeze.
Another special antique was the 1937 Hayes Motor Home which featured
exquisite woodwork inside. This particular unit was used just a few times
in the 1940's and then put in storage until it was rediscovered in the
1990's. So other than exterior paint, everything is 100% original.
The 1929 Covered Wagon trailer was the first production trailer
made in the US. Covered Wagon became the biggest trailer
manufacturer in the 1930's but closed its doors after World War II.
And what antique RV exhibit would be complete without a reference to
the aluminum sided Airstream. This model was the predecessor,
designed by Hawley Bowlus of sailplane (glider) design fame. His
segmented aluminum panels were intended to look like a glider's silk
fabric stretched over a wood frame. Airstream took over the design in
1936 and made some minor changes, eliminating the boat-tail end and
moving the entry door.
My favorite, and the hardest to capture in a picture (and none
turned out right), is the 1916 Telescoping Apartment built on a
1915 Model T truck. The back of the truck camper system slides
out on both sides, revealing cooking accessory storage and a
fold-out table on one side and clothing storage drawers on the
other. The rear end telescopes out to create an open area in the
middle of the truck large enough to be a bed. It was something of
a puzzle to imagine how it all folded in on itself for travel.
There was so much to see that our eyes started to glaze over. As I review the photos now, I wish I had taken even more pictures,
although I remember at the time thinking I had taken too many already, as my camera was flashing about five times more than
anyone else's. Upstairs we found the Wall of Fame lined with photos of the RV industry dignitaries that have been honored each
year since 1972. There is no info about the honorees accompanying the photos, but there is a computer nearby that has a
database where you can search for an honoree and read a short bio about him or her.
We found the photo of Kay and Joe Peterson of Escapees, who were honored in
2001, and the one of Wally Byam of Airstream who was honored in the first
year, 1972. We wanted to see if the founders of NuWa had been honored, but
the system isn't set up to make that kind of search very easy. You need to know
the name of the honoree rather than the name of the company.
Upstairs also houses the Reference Library. Here you can find back issues of
any and every RV magazine that ever existed, from the earliest issues of Trailer
Life to the most recent issue of the Gypsy Journal. All the magazines stand
vertically in open boxes on the bookshelves, so you can easily grab any issue
and thumb through it. We spent some happy moments leafing through old
Trailer Dealer industry trade magazines and looking at back copies of Camping
World catalogs. We even found ads in old trailer magazines for some of the
trailers we had just seen on the Road Back in Time.
It was interesting to breeze through some of the articles from years past and find that
many of the same issues were as important in those days as they are today: how to
live with limited resources while on the road, advocacy for access to public lands,
campground etiquette, how to keep the kids happy, and maintenance on every part
of a trailer or motorhome, among other things.
I randomly grabbed the October/November 1990 issue of Escapees magazine. It
was much smaller and thinner than today's edition, but it still had an opening editorial
by Kay Peterson. As she does in today's magazine, she was gently reminding us to
get out there and pursue our dreams:
"Because we have no way of knowing how long our life's cycle will last, it upsets me
to hear people, young and old, who are waiting for a particular event to do whatever it
is they want to do... If you don't fulfill your dreams now, when will you?"
Thank you, Kay, that is timeless advice!
And with her gentle encouragement ringing in our ears, we went back to the motel to rest up for the next day's adventure: driving
the Amish Heritage Trail.