We arrived Tuesday afternoon in Nappanee, expecting a 3 day visit. It turned into a two week stop. The factory starts work at 6:00 am—so the service team arrives at 6:00 to fetch the coach. At that point, we were ‘homeless’ until they delivered the coach back to us between 3:30-5:00. So, with nothing else to do, we ate- hearty middle America food. The only place open at 6:00 AM was an Amish bakery/restaurant specializing in things like waffles, blueberry pancakes, fresh bread. Their claim to fame is the annual baking of an apple pie over 2 metres in diameter. After our carb free life in Florida, we started packing in the carbs every day (not to mention the wine every night). John said that he was going to self-combust from boredom.
The first few days back at the coach were fairly depressing. On Day 1, we had a huge rainstorm and once again had a ceiling leak. They had to remove the ceiling panels to get to the leak. So, we were faced with a huge wooden stick in the middle of the living room holding up the ceiling panels. The service team had put red stripes on it so that we wouldn’t walk into it accidentally. We added a “Welcome to Miller’s Barbershop” sign in it and got some laughs from the guys.
The bad news was that we had so many things to be fixed on a brand new coach. The good news was that the service team dedicated to the Essex was spectacular. Ken Miller (one of the many Miller’s at Newmar) was a “jack-Amish” and a godsend to us. He not only was technically competent, but listened and got things done.
In the process of trying to fix the squeaks and creaks in the front of the coach, Nevin (Ken’s brother and one of the Essex service team members) broke the front windshield. Rather than face a night in a hotel (the windshield needed time to cure), we took Gerry and Sandy up on their offer to stay with them and check out their new house. Gerry was busy with the Kruse Auction and took us out for the day to see the auction and check out the classic cars. John drove one of Gerry’s “classic” cars over to the auction- a old 60’s convertible, baby blue—and, according to John, one of the worst driving cars ever. After a two day respite, we headed back to Nappanee and had our "technical walk-through" on Saturday (our anniversary- what a memorable day- learning all about the heating, plumbing and mechanical aspects of our motorhome- not very romantic.) Then after a full day of a walk-through, with mush for brains, we decided to go out for an anniversary dinner. There we were in northern Indiana- where the best restaurant in town is a bakery and their big claim to fame is Amish style cooking. We had heard from some of the other motorhome owners about a place called Essenhaus. In the pouring rain and freezing cold, we ventured out some 30 miles to Essenhaus. John went in first and when I walked up to the door of the restaurant, all I saw was his face pushed against the glass in a look of sheer horror. We walked in - to a 45 minute waiting line of people and horrible family style eats. We checked the menu- it was all meat, potatoes, gravy and lots of "sides" (potato salad, cole slaw, broccoli salad, mushy veggies). We did a hasty retreat and drove another 30 miles in the other direction to South Bend and to our favorite (and only) Indian restaurant in the area. Sadly, they had no wine, but they did have Taj Majal beer- so we had lamb vindaloo and Taj beers.
We
woke up on Sunday morning and got ready to leave. I got the GPS programmed for Nashville and we headed off. We got to the edge of the parking lot and water poured down from the halogen light in the ceiling onto John's head. So, we unhooked the car, and pulled back into space #23 in the factory parking lot. All of our parking lot friends from last week had gone and a new group slowly moved in. At least the sun was shining (although it was bloody cold). We were too tired to be screaming mad....so we settled in with a NY Times and resigned ourselves our fate. It really is a beautiful motorhome when it's parked.....it's just when it's moving that we have problems.
Monday morning and Ken and his team were surprised to see our coach in the parking lot. They were horrified to find out about the 2nd leak. This time, they decided to do a pressure test to find the source of the leak. Turns out that it was another unsealed antenna on the roof. They fixed the second leak and sent us on our way. But first, we had to stop at the Onan dealership to check out the black smoke pouring from the generator. 
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