Driving west across Indiana on 80/90, locally known as The Toll Road, you see a beautiful, futuristic building just before exit 96. The sign says RV Hall of Fame Museum. Well, since we’re full timers, living in a 40 ft. motor home, my husband decided to slam on the brakes and exit. He does that a lot. We’ve stopped at some pretty unusual places.
Let me tell you this stop was worth it. The museum is not new, it used to be in downtown Elkhart, IN, which is the RV capitol of the world. But this building is so new it’s not even finished. They’re still working on a huge display area in the back. And when it’s done it will be fantastic.
We paid our $7.00 and got a brief tour of where things were located and then sent on our merry way to poke and peek and oh and ah all afternoon. We started in the manufacturers Hall of Fame where they had set up displays of the different types of recreational vehicles, from pop up campers to big rigs. I don’t know if everyone lusts after the next new thing in RV’s but my husband does. So we walked through, and sat, and pretended our way through some mighty nice campers.
Then we read all the names under the pictures of the industry pioneers and the recent inductees. They must add new people every year. They had RV manufacturers, suppliers, designers and campground owners, the people who made the RV scene into a huge industry. We stopped next to see the movie. It was instructional and enlightening but I won’t tell you about it, I don’t want to spoil the ending. Actually, I was asleep. Hubby kept poking me but darn, at my age I catch some z’s anywhere I can.
We moved on to the best part next. The Hall of Fame of RV’s. Wow, these were practically going back to the original RV, the covered wagon. Not quite but almost. We saw little trailers, and big trailers and early motorized homes.
They even had Mae West’s RV on display. This was the most beautiful bus conversion I’ve ever seen. All wood and leather and brass. A chauffeur would pick Miss West up at her home and drive her to the studio. When she was ready to return home he would come back to pick her up. If traffic was bad she sometimes would sit on the back veranda and sip tea while they poked along. There was a little kitchen area where the driver made a snack if Miss West wanted one. For rainy days there was a tea table inside. I could just imagine Mae West sitting in her RV, enjoying her lounge on wheels just like I do.
As we wondered through the displays it was amazing to see how many ways these campers were designed, fitting a whole life style into itty bitty spaces. The restoration was wonderful. Refinished woods and shiny brass made them look like they had just spent their first summer wondering the north woods or some newly developed National Park.
Walking through some of these antiques or just peeking past tourist ropes into others we moved through the years coming into recent history. There was a 1963 travel trailer in mint condition. And of course “Honey” said, “That’s the year were married. If we’d have been rich we might have had one of these instead of an old van to travel around in.”
It was fun to see how we might have lived had our resources or needs been different. I don’t know if you’d like spending a whole afternoon looking at antique travel vehicles but it sure was fun for us. I would recommend stopping by to anyone even remotely interested in this stuff.
