We had 221 RVs at the rally, and nearly 300 people who are staying in local RV parks here in Yuma came in on day passes. That’s a pretty good turnout, and we were very pleased with the numbers.

In looking over the feedback forms and the e-mails we have received about the rally, we see a common theme in them. The biggest complaints we had were about a lack of power. A lot of people said that they expected 30 amp hookups, but we seldom find that at fairgrounds or RV rallies. The 20 amp power more commonly available is enough to keep your batteries charged, but as soon as people start using coffee pots, microwave ovens, and curling irons, circuit breakers start tripping.

The noise caused by aircraft from the Marine Air Station was also a problem for some people, but there really isn’t anything we can do about that. But, a lot of people said that while the noise was somewhat bothersome, it was no big deal, and that they would rather put up with that than wading through the mud at the Pinal County Fairgrounds in Casa Grande, or the noxious smell from the nearby dairy there.

There were some other issues raised and suggestions made for future rallies at this venue, and in a meeting yesterday with the fairgrounds management, I think we resolved most of them. Unlike the people running the fairgrounds in Casa Grande, the management here in Yuma is eager to earn our continued business, they listen to our needs, and they try to address them.

The fairgrounds is going to increase the electrical power available for RV hookups, as well as the number of “spider boxes” used to supply temporary hookups during rallies. They hope to increase the amount of electric available in the north parking area (Lot B), as well as bringing power to a new area where we should be able to park 30 or more RVs. 

Next year the rally will be March 7-11, right here at the Yuma Fairgrounds. We plan to have a food vendor on site, we will rent a couple of six passenger golf carts to shuttle people around, and we have arranged for the use of an extra building for vendor seminars, which will solve the problem of noise in the large vendor building interfering with seminars. Another complaint was low water pressure in the north lot, which has been resolved already. Apparently there was an underground leak, which they fixed Monday.

This rally was a learning experience, and we are putting those lessons to use.  I also obtained permission for our parking crew to come in a day early and dry camp next year, which will speed things up on Early Bird parking day.

This year’s rally was a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. We’re already looking forward to next year!

Our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage really needed a bath, and Greg and Jan White’s American Eagle was just about as bad. So yesterday we had a mobile crew come in from Road Runner RV Wash, and they washed and hand waxed both rigs from the roof down. There are several companies that provide this service to the snowbirds here in Yuma, and they keep pretty busy. The cost for our 40 foot motorhome, including hand waxing, was $100.

Our van was coated in mud from parking RVs in the rain last week, and when I asked how much it would be to do it too, I was told $10. It costs me more than that  do the job at a car wash myself!

Today we are going to leave Yuma and caravan north with Greg and Jan. They have never been to Lake Havasu City or seen the London Bridge, so we’ll make a stop there to play tourist, and then we’ll go on to Laughlin, Nevada for a night.

We have reservations at the Thousand Trails in Las Vegas on Wednesday, where we plan to just relax and unwind for a week or two, while we wait for the weather to warm up in our old hometown of Show Low, in northern Arizona. Once we’re sure winter really is over in the high country,. we’re headed there for a much needed grandkid fix.

Thought For The Day – ‘Normal’ is just a setting on the dryer.

There is an ongoing thread on the Escapees Forum about the fact that Flying J truck stops are now charging RVers $5 to dump their holding tanks. Some of the people who have commented about Flying J’s new policy, as well as some who have written to me about it, are really ticked off, calling it corporate greed and vowing to buy their fuel elsewhere from now on. One fulltime RVer who e-mailed me said “I have bought fuel at Flying J for 8 years, used their dump stations, and spent the night many times. But I’ll go out of my way to avoid them from now on!”

Well, I don’t blame you, brother. The nerve of those guys! After years of giving you free camping and free dumping, now that the economy has changed and businesses are scrambling to cover their costs, let alone make a profit, you deserve to be able to continue to freeload. How dare they start charging you for the same things that commercial campgrounds have been charging for ever since they first opened!

I remember a similar thread last year before the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, when folks were complaining that barriers in the parking lot of the Sedalia Wal-Mart prevented RVers from entering to dry camp overnight, and there were comments about boycotting the store. 

Where is it written that a business has to give its customers anything for free! Good service, yes; a fair price, absolutely; but free camping and the free use of an RV dump station? I guess I missed that memo.

I served many years on my town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, and I remember codes requiring businesses to jump through a lot of hoops if they wanted to set up shop in our community. But I can’t ever remember demanding that a business give something away to customers.

For the most part, RVers are pretty special people, and I’m proud to count myself among their numbers. But every barrel has a few bad apples,including ours.

My friend Bill Joyce sent me a link to a blog post yesterday about Wild Horse Casino near Chandler, Arizona. It seems that in the past, RVers had abused the casino’s hospitality by setting up housekeeping for weeks, even months on end. That has changed, and now casino security is clamping down on the RV slobs who take unfair advantage of the casino’s free RV parking. I’m sure that there are some who feel this is unfair too. Probably the same jerks who caused the problem in the first place.

I just don’t get this idea that somebody owes us anything and we deserve to get it. I appreciate it when a business gives me a break, whether it be free camping, free dumping, or a discount on a purchase. But I don’t expect it, and I don’t demand it. And if a business has been generous in the past, but things change and they have to start charging me for a service that was free in the past, I certainly don’t feel offended, I don’t boycott them, and I don’t whine and complain. I appreciate the courtesies of the past, pay up and figure I’m still ahead because of prior savings,and continue to support them. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Bad Nick has been busy, by the way, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Our Tax Dollars At Work. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I want to know – therefore I go.

We are confirmed night owls, never going to bed before midnight or 1 a.m., if not later. But Friday night, after a week of getting up early and going to bed late during the rally, Terry was sound asleep by 10 p.m., and less than an hour later, I was sawing logs too. Saturday morning we slept in, and then lay in bed snuggling and talking about how nice it was to be lazy for a while.

We finally opened the shades and greeted the world sometime close to noon, just in time to say goodbye to Tom and Barbara Westerfield, who were headed to Tucson for yet another rally. Talk about gluttons for punishment!

Soon after they pulled out, Miss Terry and Jan White loaded up a week’s dirty laundry and headed for a laundromat, while Greg White and I went back to the fairgrounds main building to check out the gun show. The place was packed with display tables holding every kind of firearm and accessory you could ever want or need, and people checking out the goodies for sale.

After we had drooled over everything on display, and agreeing that while we’d love to have a few dozen new shooting irons, Greg and I decided that our budgets and vehicle carrying capacities were both too limited to allow that. So we went back to our Winnebago, where Greg installed a new Star Light 1000 motion detector light that I got from one of the vendors at our rally, in place of our motorhome’s original equipment porch light.

About the time Greg finished up with that, the ladies came back from the laundry, and the four of us drove to Texas Roadhouse to meet Stu and Donna McNicol, who had helped on our rally parking crew, and served as room hosts during the rally. The six of us had a nice dinner while we discussed the rally, talked about the way things went wrong on Sunday when the Early Birds arrived in a pouring rainstorm, and planned ahead for next year’s rally and how we can handle the crowd more efficiently.

Stu and Donna followed us back to the fairgrounds, where we spent a few more hours visiting, and solving most of the problems of the world, or at least the RV world. Stu is a retired fire chief, and we loved hearing his stories about life in the station house.

Did I mention that the airplanes fly really low overhead as they take off and land at the Marine Air Station across the street from the fairgrounds? These photos my pal Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School took show what I mean! But after a couple of weeks here, we hardly even notice them any more. Some people at the rally found the noise of the aircraft to be too intrusive, but as I said before, that’s the sound of freedom, and I appreciate the men and women in the cockpits and on the flight line.

We have a lot of paperwork to catch up on from the rally, several orders to prepare to send out in Monday’s mail, and I need to wash off a thick layer of mud and crud that accumulated on our van while I was parking RVs in the storm Sunday. Monday we’ll settle our bill with the fairgrounds, try to find somebody to wash and wax our motorhome, and continue decompressing from our busy week.

Thought For The Day – The greatest grief is that which we cause ourselves.

Friday morning we were up early again, serving coffee and donuts to our rally attendees, saying goodbye, and wishing them a safe trip to wherever they are headed next. There were lots of hugs as RVers wished us well, congratulated us on a great rally experience, and promised to see us somewhere down the road.

By noon, most of the RVs had departed from the Yuma Fairgrounds, usually after making a stop at the dump station on their way out, to empty their gray and black tanks. The place sure looked empty after being filled with motorhomes, fifth wheels, and travel trailers for two weeks, first for the Arizona Good Sam rally and then our Western Gypsy Gathering rally.

We waited until everybody else had pulled out before we made our trip to the dump station, and then we parked in the same back corner of the fairgrounds where we had been before the rally. As soon as we were situated, an installer from Redlands Truck & RV started installing a set of Koni shock absorbers on our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage. Our motorhome rides pretty good already, but the new Koni shocks should make it even better. Thanks Keith Shumaker and crew, for your great service! Redlands was one of our rally vendors, and I was really impressed with them, as were many rally attendees who kept them busy with installations.

Once Rob, the Redlands mechanic, was finished with our rig, Terry and I, Greg and Jan White, and Mike and Elaine Loscher went to an early dinner at Chretin’s, a wonderful Mexican restaurant that Miss Terry pronounced one of the best she has been to in our travels around the country. That’s saying a lot! We had a pleasant meal, just unwinding, rehashing the rally events, comparing notes on what we did right, what we did wrong, and how we can make it better next year.

Back at the fairgrounds, we said our goodbyes to Mike and Elaine, who are leaving early today, bade Greg and Jan goodnight, and headed inside for a quiet evening just trying to let the kinks and aches seep out of our bodies.

We were in bed much earlier than usual, turning off our cell phones and vowing not to open the curtains today until at least noon!

It’s been a busy week, a great rally, and we’re sure glad it’s over! Thanks to everybody who came, and especially to our hardworking volunteers!

Thought For The Day – Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Well, we did it again! Our Fourth Annual Western Gypsy Journal Rally ends today with morning coffee and donuts, and then folks will hitch up and scatter to all points of the compass. It’s been a frustrating, rewarding, exhausting, exhilarating week that we thought would never end, that went by way too fast.

Yesterday evening, when we finally got all of the vendors cleared out of the exhibit building, finished with all of the door prizes and end of rally announcements, had all of the folding chairs stacked, and the exhibit hall swept out, it was almost 10 p.m., and we still had not eaten all day.

Greg and Jan White drove us to IHOP for a quick meal before we returned to the motorhome to do a couple hours of paperwork before bedtime, and as we plodded our stiff bodies across the parking lot on aching feet, Terry and I asked ourselves if it is all worth it.

But then we thought back on all of the positive comments we got all week long, the many warm hugs from friends, the volunteers who saw a job that needed done and pitched right in, the opportunity to teach others about the RV lifestyle, the standing ovation that Miss Terry got at the end of the rally for all of her hard work and organizational skill, and the camaraderie we all shared this week, and we knew that yes, it really is all worth it!

We may not be wealthy in terms of dollars in the bank, but with friends like we have, we are truly rich!

A lot of attendees took photos and shared them with us, and just looking at them shows you how much fun these rallies are, whether  it’s a bunch of people sitting around having morning coffee and donuts, or a couple of guys just enjoying the opportunity to get together and hang out.

And, of course, no matter how busy we are, there’s always time for merriment. From the look in this photo, you’re probably not sure if Mac McCoy is chewing me out, or getting ready to kiss me. Given my “druthers” I think I’d prefer the butt chewing!

I did get a little nervous when I was making my announcements last night, and Ken Pace, Ed Allard, and Sid Dembowski, three fellows that are just a little taller than your average redwood tree, came up and took over the stage.

If you’re my size, giants can be downright intimidating! Ed said that they had a good time at the rally, but that they had a suggestion for future rallies. It seems that they didn’t feel that we had enough activities for tall people, and suggested a rousing game of dwarf tossing! Hmmm, now where are they going to find a dwarf???? I’m outta here!

It’s been a lot of fun, everybody seems to have had a good time, overall, and the few complaints we have had were usually about things that were out of our control, such as the noise from the aircraft from the Marine Air Station across the street. I’ll have more photos and a rally recap in tomorrow’s blog.

Thought For The Day – A half empty glass means there’s room for more.