Nappanee, Day 1

Today was a catch up day.  Laundry and such.  We checked into Newmar this morning and soon two techs were at our coach going over the list of items that needed attention.  Some things were just questions and some others will require knowledgable and tender loving care.  I had an additional list for the techs above and beyond the long list that I had emailed to them, but they took it all in stride, maintaining a professional demeanor throughout.  We made plans for them to pick Nessie up at 6 am (?) on Monday. That's eastern time, three hours earlier than our familiar pacific time, and quite a bit earlier than we would prefer.  Oh well, it's only for five…. long….. consecutive….. one after another……days.

Mid afternoon found us wandering around downtown Nappanee.  This is a small town, without a huge shopping area, but a fair amount of Amish influence.  We stopped at Coppes Commons, a converted industrial building that now houses several unique shops.  The first place we checked was, of course, Rocket Science, the local ice cream shop that makes each order of ice cream right before your eyes using liquid nitrogen.  Then we cruised the small, local, market in the front of the building.

Most of the items featured were of local origin, or certainly from the Amish community.  These two goodies were made in Shipshewana, just a few miles northeast of us.

There was also a quaint woodworking shop in the building with an interesting "Cue Ball Clock".

An electric motor drives an arm that completes exactly one revolution per minute.  At the beginning of each cycle a ball is picked up and deposited on the upper track where it rolls into the group labeled "min 1,2,3,4".  When the fifth ball rolls into that track, the track tips one ball out to drop onto the track labeled min 5,10...etc; the other four balls miss the "dump" and are returned to the stack on the bottom. Same thing for the hours….a ball is dumped from the minute track, and when a 12th ball is added, the last track dumps and we start all over again.  What a concept! And the effort involved to balance all the moving pieces.  Wow!