Well, it’s been a long time, so let me catch you up.
1) All is well with us.
2) We are now back at our house in Florida. We have had issues with our waste tanks on and off the whole trip, so we decided to come back and get it dealt with. We were tired of the bathroom smelling like an outhouse.
3) We spent a week and a half in Amana, IA at two different RV events. So we didn’t have alot of free time and I wanted to wait until we had a couple tours so I wasn’t repetitive.
4) Our plan is to hit the road again January - July with stops in Jersey in April and June for Andrew and Krystal’s wedding celebrations.
By the way, here are a couple of my favorite pictures of Andrew and Krystal from their engagement picture shoot.
So…enjoy this last post and I will see you again sometime mid-January.
We stopped at a Harvest Host between North Platte, IA and Amana, IA. It was an apple orchard. We had yummy turnovers, bought some fresh apples and enjoyed the view.
We then travelled to Amana, IA (Amana Colonies). A little Amana History. There are 7 colonies that make up Amana. It was started by a religious group known as the Inspirationists. They fled Germany due to persecution and economic depression. They arrived in Iowa in 1855. They lived a communal life. There were 7 communities, 7 churches and one group of elders. They received housing, medical care, meals, household necessities and schooling. Property and resources were shared. Men and women were assigned jobs by their village council of brethren. No one received a wage because they didn’t need one. The communal lifestyle remained in place until 1932. A few reasons for the “great change” were
A) the Great Depression
B) it was never meant to be permanent, just a way to afford living
C) people wanting some independence. Rather than having people leave, they moved away from the communal lifestyle so people would stay.
Amana became a National Historic Landmark in 1965. Currently there are about 1,600 people in Amana. About half of the population are descendants of the communal times.
We were in Amana for two RV Rallies. The first one was people who had trailers made by Forest River. There were all kinds of trailers from massive ones down to barely more than a bed. This was during Amana’s Oktoberfest. They had dinners each evening, but the days were open to go to Oktoberfest. So we drank beer (real and root), listened to music and all that the fest had to offer. The second rally was with RV Miles, which is a utube, podcast channel that we follow. This rally was much more to our liking, as they had lots of seminars and activities. We got to learn alot and meet people who we had more in common with because they all really like RVing. We found the first rally was alot of weekenders, whereas the second group were a mix of full time and many month at a time travelers. My description of the difference is that one of the people we talked to at the Forest River rally said his limit was 10 days. Man, 10 days I feel like I am just starting to hit my groove.
Here are some pics from Amana’s 59th Oktoberfest:
Dave really liked their special Oktoberfest brew and I enjoyed their homemade root beer
The Festhalle Stage had various bands throughout the event. We really enjoyed Barefoot Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen (top pic) but our most favorite was the Collegium Tubum, which was the University of Iowa Tubas playing all different polkas.
One very large pretzel.
The shops in town were all open and a couple had special tours. We toured the furniture store and the woolen mill.
Some interesting facts about the Amana Furniture store.
A) The furniture store was started in 1854.
B) The gentleman who toured us around has worked at the store for 42 years and there is one gentleman who has worked there for 52 years.
c) this is a wood furniture store and we toured the workshop. (For those who knew my Dad, this would have been a perfect job for him, just building beautiful wood pieces all the time)
D) all of the germans from the Amana Colonies are buried in the same style pine coffin. Amana furniture has been and still is the builder of those coffins. Originally they used saw dust as the padding, now they use a foam insert.
E) walnut is the wood of choice of the shop. In the US the overall use of walnut is 1%. The Amana woodshop uses 55% walnut.
F) unrelated to the furniture store, Amana refrigeration started in Amana Colonies and is still in business today, though it has been bought out by other manufacturers over the years.
G) They are still using the work benches in the shop that were built 1850-1930. Talk about quality builds.
h) they have a hard time finding people who want to work in the trade. He said the majority of the workers are 60 or over. They want to find people to pass the craft on to.
I) I found this fact particularly interesting. The saw dust is collected in a bin outside the building. It is then shipped to a farm where it is mixed with waste materials from other companies. They then remove the methane gas and use it to power all of Amana. Once the methane is out, they use the remaining product as fertilizer for the fields.
These are the rolls of “thread” that go around the previous picture to create the base material
During our second rally we had a tour of Middle Amana and the only remaining communal kitchen.
They had a sampling of food, though I didn’t try any (sauerkraut salad, pickled beets and ham with horseradish sauce).
The communal kitchen served 5 meals a day at set times to 30-40 people per meal. There were only 3 meals on Sunday so that the kitchen workers could also have some time off. They would ring a bell to let you know that the meal was ready. If you were working in the field, you came in for your “coffee break”. If they were far out, they would take the coffee break to the fields. There was a kitchen boss and a garden boss who were responsible for feeding the community. There were 50 communal kitchens at the height of the colonies.
Here is a sample menu:
So many facts we learned on this tour I am just going to give a list of some in no particular order:
1) People worked 10 hour days, 6 days a week.
2) the Inspirationists Church still exists today and has 300 members.
3) you did not have a full house to yourself. You had a bedroom and a living room. The hall was communal, as were the outhouses. It didn’t matter how many children you had, you only had 1 bedroom.
4) you were not allowed to switch jobs, you did the job you were assigned. If there were issues, you received more training.
5) if anyone left, there was no shunning like there is in other communities.
6) schooling was from age 2-14, then you went to work. If you showed potential, you could be chosen to become a doctor. You would then go to high school and medical school and then serve the community.
7) Elders had to approve marriage, which mainly meant that they separated the couple for 6-18 months to make sure they want to marry. They do not know of anyone who was denied by the elders after the waiting period.
8) How do you become an elder? It is either passed down or they see leadership qualities in you and assign you to be an elder.
9) the church services were exclusively in german until 1961. Homes mostly spoke German, but during WWII they would only speak it in their homes, not out in public. If you did not speak english, you did not go out.
10) They were micro neighborhoods, so you saw the same people every day and worked with the same 30 or 40. There are people who have been neighbors for 3 generations.
11) General Store was the business center of the village. No money was exchanged. They had a certain amount of credit a year that they could use.
12) majority of the buildings are still original. You can pretty much tell the ones that are not. Their main building materials were brick, lumber and sandstone. There was one house they told us about that was built with gray block. There was only one because they thought it was too ugly.
13) since religion was the basis of their community they went to church 11 times a week, this included prayer groups. In the actual church men and women entered from different sides of the church and sat on different sides of the church. This practice remains today.
14) They do not go out and seek people to join the church. However, if people come and are interested, they welcome them.
15) They still have a partial German service and an all english service.
16) The gentleman who took us on the walking tour is a direct descendent, is an elder in the church and many other things in the community. I found it super interesting the history and commitment for so many generations. To be able to talk about where you are from in such a personal way.
17) the community was a frugal society. They did not have lots of kids and celibacy was a tribute to god.
18) When members pass, they are buried in the order that they die, not grouped by family.
I always like learning how different people live and how they survived when they first came to a new place to improve their lives.
Communal dining area with the group from the RV rally
Communal kitchen
Communal kitchen
Communal kitchen
The communal kitchen. The kitchen boss lived in the front part with other families and the single story portion in the back is the communal kitchen
This is their church. Nothing fancy, no stain glass windows or anything.
This is the block house that they only built one of because they thought it was ugly.
Two other things we enjoyed while there were the bakery in Amana and having coffee/tea and a yummy strudel or turnover. One day we took pics of the birds waiting for the crumbs.
The other was they had a bike path that started shortly outside of our campground and went to “main” Amana and a couple of the other colonies. So every time we went into town for Oktoberfest, bakery, tours we could ride our bikes and just enjoy.
So… here is the map of our trip from June - October. I will also leave you with a picture I took the morning we were leaving Amana.
Til next time….probably mid-January.
