Saturday, July 1, 2017, Elkhart, IN
Day 51

A 20 mile drive to South Bend for a visit to the Studebaker National Museum. The Studebaker family began the company in the 1850's and built horse-drawn carriages. The company transitioned to autos in spite of a majority of the board who thought that autos was merely a passing fad. The museum includes carriages (including some Presidential carriages) in addition to beautiful specimens of its autos.  For lunch, we took a 10 minute walk to Tippecanoe Place Restaurant which is housed in the four story mansion of Clem Studebaker. Good meal. After lunch and a self-guided tour of the house, we went back to the museum for a guided tour of the Oliver Mansion. J.D. Oliver was the leader of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works. He developed a method of cooling the steel of the plow which made it stronger and lead to the company making the overwhelming majority of plows in the late 1800's. The mansion built in 1897 has 38 rooms and 14 fireplaces and beautiful woodwork. After the tour we drove through downtown South Bend before heading to the Notre Dame University. We walked around a bit and viewed the “Gold Dome”. There is religion everywhere on campus and way too much for my taste.