Bet you thought we got lost

It is still taking me some time to get up to snuff and going to rally’s is not the way to do it; but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything… It is only to explain why it has been so long since I have posted to our journey.

First off, we only got back with Anne and Henry once more time before we left Elkhart campground… We said good-bye to Nick and Terry Russell on Sunday morning… They headed to Celina, Ohio for the Gypsy Journal Rally East and we went to our Montana Rally just about 20 miles south in Goshen, Indiana… We had about 78 Montana’s pull in by Monday and the rally was under-way…. Our friends David and Jo-Anna that had met us in Duluth/Superior earlier this summer were the Wagon Masters and what a rally they organized.. We had things going on all week and learned a ton of things… I put on a seminar on Full Time RV’ering and asked some of our good friends to help… Steve and Vicki came in from Missouri. It has been three years since we have seen them and they have been on the road even longer than we have.. They go way back to the beginning of our blog when we met them in 2005 at Glacier NP and a little later at Minden Utah… We have seen them several times since but it was way too long this time… Our newest friends Pam and Bob have been full timing for 10 years and it was wonderful to get their input also…Of course Bill and Steve added their ideas and input from the man’s viewpoint and it looks like everyone learned a lot and were happy with what we relayed to them…

Anytime there is a rally we all eat too much… The first night is a Meet ‘n Greet where we all pig out on appetizers and desserts while getting to know the newest members… During the day there are seminars from all kinds of venders related to the RV Industry and most of them end with food of some kind, pot lucks, wine and cheese, ice cream social, pork roast at one of the local Montana Dealers, etc. but our favorite was a dinner at an Amish Farmhouse… Talk about wonderful, you just couldn’t beat it. We started our with homemade breads and jams, salad, chicken, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, home made noodle and green beans… This was all served family style and passed around again for those that still had an ounce of space left… Then they brought out the pies!! OMG… How wonderful. They served blueberry, pecan, banana cream and my very favorite raspberry cream. It was the best I have ever tasted in my life.. I even had to buy the cookbook to find out how to make it… Now you know why we have about 160 people on diets… Each evening ended around the campfire where talking went on until the wee hours….. I am still suffering from anemia and was too tired to attend these sessions but it sounds like everyone had a great time.

On Saturday morning 21 of the gals meet at about 7:30 AM and went over to Keystone (the makers of Montana and Big Sky as well as many other trailers) to have a class on driving these huge RV’s down the road. I was included in this class and after classroom instructions we all went out to the parking lot and actually did it all. Keystone furnished the RV’s and instructors and we furnished the trucks…. We each had to hitch up, pull forward, unhitch and take care of the landing gears and electrical. Then we got to back up into a campground and finally we were able to drive several blocks, turn around and come back… It was awesome and I have a certificate to prove it.. I now know that in an emergency, I would be able to get us to wherever we need to go.

Sunday was the last day of the rally and we all had a hard time saying good-bye to our friends.. We were so lucky that some of the ones parked next to us are some of our favorite people… You have seen many of them from our Florida luncheons but one couple attending their first National Rally was Nita and Al from New York… If you go way back in our journal you will find that we spent several days with them in Myrtle Beach about three years ago and it was so good to see them again. When I filled out my form on what I thought was the best part of the rally I had no trouble saying that it was the people….. David and Jo-Anna did better than any professional could have done and I sure do want to thank them… Whoever follows in their footsteps have their work cut out for them…

We had a cold front come thru on Sunday night and the wind kicked up, rain that was colder than the dickens started and we all hooked up in awful weather. We had been so lucky the past few weeks, even having to use the air conditioner but it was clearly time to head south… That was when I looked at my phone and found a message from the day before from our Escapee friends Dale and Terry. They were in town and when we tried to get together earlier Terry was sick… I felt so bad to miss the call cuz we did have some free time on Sunday night and we could have gone out to dinner with them but once we hooked up Bill was ready to roll… He didn’t want to stop until we got to warm weather….

We had every intention of going to the Gypsy Journal Rally in Ohio when we left Goshen but I was exhausted. Being social able with so many had taken it’s toll. I wouldn’t have given it up for anything but I couldn’t go another day… Our loss because we have so many of our Escapee Friends attending that rally… We came within 6 miles of the rally but made the decision to keep going…. This darn anemia is making me very angry.

With the change of plans we also changed our direction and went a short distance off I-75 to se the first couple we had met in the Full time class of 2005….. Tab and Deanna live not far off the Interstate and have a shop that we could park at and have electric and water. The drive was just over 200 miles but winds gusting from 40-60mph had us going pretty slow,,, In fact I-75 had warnings for high profile vehicles to get off the road. Well we are very high profile but we took it slow and made it to what we call Camp Pull-Tab… It was so great to see them again. We hadn’t seen them since January of 2006. We had a nice time going out to dinner with them and staying in their yard…

We left Camp Pull-Tab about 9:00 this morning and headed south east. Because of our detour off the freeway we had a wonderful scenic road that we traveled instead. Federal Highway 35 was a beautiful four lane highway that took us to places we didn’t know a thing about… When it was getting close to lunch time we started looking for places to eat and came across one of those wonderful things that happens to us so often… The story is long and I am so tired that it will wait until tomorrow… I’ll try to tell you about it early in the morning but if not it will be a little later in the day… Don’t miss it.

Later…………..

Sep 29, 2009

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