Tag Archives: Escapade 2014

2014/05/14 (W) The Mid-Point

The Escapees RV Club Escapade started on Monday afternoon and ends on Friday afternoon, so the middle of the event is sometime Wednesday afternoon.  Many attendees arrived on Sunday and many others, including us, on Saturday.  Most of the event staff, and many of the volunteers, arrived before that so today probably did not feel like the mid-point of the event to them, even though it was.

Teresa Moore, SKP RV Club COO, and Geroge Maylaben, owner of the RV Driving School.

Teresa Moore, SKP RV Club COO, and Geroge Maylaben, owner of the RV Driving School.

Linda still wasn’t feeling 100% so we skipped breakfast and went to the hospitality building for some coffee.  We like our own coffee better, but this coffee was included in the price of admission.  We took a stroll through the Marketplace (vendor area), which is in the two buildings adjacent to the hospitality area, and picked up a new regen tube and end caps for our portable water softener from RV-Water-Treatment.  We stopped to visit with Nick and a Terry Russell and renewed our Gypsy Journal subscription for two years.  As much as I love to read TGJ on newsprint, we switched our subscription to digital.  Printed materials are just more difficult to deal with in a mobile lifestyle.  Along with other informational and transactional activities we are trying to make our lives as paperless and mobile friendly as possible.

Our photo work continued even as the rains returned and intensified.  We tried to drop in on every seminar and the crafters to get photos.  Today was the Ladies Tea & Social, and some of the Ladies wore their Red Hats.  We attended the Ham Radio seminar, put on by Tom Abernathy (W3TOM), and Nick Russell’s seminar on Boondocking and off-the-grid RVing.  I got a few photos of the Ham-O-Rama (talent show) dress rehearsal while Linda went back to our coach to get some things.  As busy as we are, we always take time to smell the flowers and admire their beauty.

Some of the plants at Elkhart Co. 4-H Fairgrounds.

Some of the plants at Elkhart Co. 4-H Fairgrounds.

We met back at the seminar building for the Chapter 6 (Great Lakes) social.  We’ve been members of Chapter 6 for four years, having joined at the 2010 Escapade in Goshen, but to-date we have not managed to attend a Chapter 6 rally.  We may have met with other Chapter 6 members at a small social at the 53rd Escapade in Gillette, Wyoming last summer but today’s social was the first time we recalled meeting a larger group of members.  The Chapter will celebrate its 30th anniversary in September and we are planning to attend the rally if at all possible.  At the conclusion of our social I took a few pictures of the SKP Geocache BOF leaders in front of their BOF banner.  They asked if I would be willing to share the photos and gave me their contact information.

No entertainment was scheduled for this evening, leaving Escapade attendees free to socialize, go to dinner, or play cards or bingo in one of the two rooms designated for those purposes.  I photographed the bingo and then went to Lou and Val’s 5th Wheel so Lou could transfer my camera photos, and Linda’s cell phone photos, to his computer.  A few of the images will be used in an upcoming Escapade slide show and subsequently by the Escapees RV Club for other purposes.

Rally "bling."

Rally “bling.”

I had planned to work with Butch on some things this evening but by the time I got back to our coach it was an hour later than I had expected.  I chatted with him and Fonda for a half hour and then retired to our rig for the evening.  Nick Russell had asked if I would send him some of my photos (of him).  I went through all of the photos I had taken thus far and found the ones that included him and/or Terry.  I resized them to a maximum dimension of 1936 pixels (from 3872 for the hi-res JPEGs that come out if the camera), reducing each file to 25% of its original size, put them in a Dropbox folder, and e-mailed him the link.  I did the same thing for the SKP Geocache BOF photos.  By the time I checked and replied to e-mails and logged in to RVillage it was way past bedtime.

2014/05/11 (N) A Pre-Game Show

Linda received Mother’s Day wishes this morning from our daughter and son.  Modern communications technology has certainly changed the RV experience, making it possible to stay in contact with family and friends, and even work or conduct business from the road.  The Elkhart County 4-H Fairground has WiFi and the WiFi Ranger Company is sponsoring WiFi connectivity and the WiFi Cafe during Escapade.  Our friends were having difficulty staying connected from inside their metal hulled bus, but we found and locked onto a strong signal using our WiFi Ranger Mobile Ti and shared it with them.

Panorama of the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds.

Panorama of the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds.

Today was still early arrival–the Escapade doesn’t officially start until tomorrow–but many rigs were already here and more arrived during the day.  For a rally that had not yet started there was a lot of activity.  Escapees runs a very popular “RVers Boot Camp” as a pre-rally before every Escapade.  They also have their SmartWeigh program set up to weigh vehicles.  The Geeks On Tour (Jim and Chris Guld) were also running pre-rally workshops on technologies for travelers, including Windows 8, cell phones, Picasa, and blogging.  Yesterday and today were big setup days for the vendors and Escapade volunteers were busy setting up the registration area, seminar rooms, and other venues.

I got a call from Lou Petkus (K9LU) regarding photography during the Escapade.  Linda and I had previously volunteered to be part of an official SKP Photographers BOF Escapade photography team.  He picked us up in a golf cart around 9:00 AM and we drove back to Building A to meet up with Sue Spahn, the forth member of our team.  Since the advent of digital photography, Escapade has featured a slide show of the previous day’s events just ahead of the evening announcements, door prizes, and entertainment.  Kathy Carr, Escapees RV Club president, and her daughter-in-law, Angie Carr, have handled this in the past, but asked the SKP Photographers BOF if they would take responsibility for it this year.  It was fortuitous that the BOF agreed to do this as Kathy and Bud had to return to Texas for medical reasons.  Kay Peterson, SKP founder and SKP #1, returned to Texas with them.

Molly Pinner (Escapade Director) and Lou Petkus (head photographer).

Molly Pinner (Escapade Director) and Lou Petkus (head photographer).

The photography team met for about an hour, looked at the schedule of events for the week, and discussed the kind of photos we were after and the logistics of covering all of the activities and still having some time to participate.  Head and shoulders shots of smiling people were at the top of the list, of course.  We each got a flash drive to use for transferring our photos each day to Lou whose job it would be to assemble the daily slide show.

Registration opened at 10:00 AM so we took care of that and picked up our 54th Escapade polo shirts we had pre-ordered.  I got a few photos of the Registration area/process, coffee/donut area, and Escapade banners in the WiFi Cafe.  Kelly Hogan, the president of WiFi Ranger, had his magnificent Class D motorhome and matching communications trailer parked just outside the building and we were able to chat with him briefly to thank him personally for figuring out how to get our WFR-MTi working with the Williston Crossings RV Resort WiFi system this past winter.

There were signs of spring at the fairgrounds.

There were signs of spring at the fairgrounds.

Linda headed back to our coach to start working on a project with Butch and Fonda while I stopped at the AG building to take a few photos of the Geeks On Tour in action.  I also stopped by the RVers boot camp for some photos and then climbed the grandstand to take a panorama of the fairgrounds.  Back at our rig I shot another panorama of our row and then settled in to work on Butch and Fonda’s project until we had to meet with Lou again at 3:30 PM.  We found Lou and Val’s rig and then drove over to Sue’s rig in Lou’s golf cart.  While we were there Lou got Wayne to take a picture of the photography team.

We decided to go to dinner with Lou and Val and headed back down US-33 looking for Culver’s.  Linda and I were able to get nice salads there and split some French fries.  Lou started to drive us back to our site but we kept stopping for photo ops.  One of those opportunities was the Vendor pizza party/social.  We got our photos and visited briefly with folks we knew like Chris Guld of Geeks On Tour, Nick/Terry Russell of The Gypsy Journal, and Charles/Chris Yust of C &’C Marketing (our RV insurance agents).  Escapade directors Bob and Molly Pinner were there along with some other vendors that we recognized.  Molly invited us to stay, which we appreciated, but we are not RV vendors and this was their social.

Terry Russell, Chris Guld, and Nick Russell at the vendor/speaker social.

Terry Russell, Chris Guld, and Nick Russell at the vendor/speaker social.

The RV vendors are their own little community (sub-culture) within the larger community/sub-culture of RVing.  Many (most?) of them are full-time RVers who make their living traveling the RV rally and show circuits selling their goods and services.  As such they share experiences and perspectives that are different from those of us who just attend rallies and shows, especially those of us who are retired.  They are often at the same events and, even when they are competitors, frequently become good friends.

Wallce Lewis (Escapade Assistant Director), Dortha Hall (Escapade Coordinator), and Jim Guld (speaker) at the vendor/speaker social.

Wallce Lewis (Escapade Assistant Director), Dortha Hall (Escapade Coordinator), and Jim Guld (speaker) at the vendor/speaker social.

We finally got back to our coach where I downloaded photos from our Sony alpha 100 SLR camera to my laptop computer while Linda downloaded photos from her Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone to her laptop computer and then onto her SKP flash drive.  I used Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) to process the two panoramas I had photographed and then transferred everything to my SKP supplied flash drive.  We walked over to Lou and Val’s 5th wheel and visited for a while as Lou downloaded the photos from the flash drives and took a quick look at them.

We decided to take the long way back to our coach by walking through some of the campground areas we had not yet visited.  Thick clouds had moved in and the skies to the west were getting ominously dark.  Several people stopped us to let us know that possibly severe storms were headed our way portending damaging hail and wind gusts of 70 MPH.  We shortened our walk and headed back to our rig where we found Butch outside talking on his cell phone.  We put up the two awnings we had down for sun shade and stowed our chairs and end table.  High wind and awnings don’t mix well.  Butch and I chatted until the mosquitoes got bad and then retreated to our respective buses for the evening.

Panorama of EC4HFG horse track infield parking area.

Panorama of EC4HFG horse track infield parking area.

It got into the low 80’s today and the humidity was up with the approaching weather, so the coach interior was in the upper 80’s.  We were watching the approaching storms on our weather apps and the weather/radar sub-channel out of Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  It was a fairly aggressive system but showed signs of dividing and going around us to the north and south.  The rain eventually started, forcing us to close our ceiling vents and narrow our window openings.  Serious lightning developed and the rain intensified to the point where we had to close the large entrance door window and reduce the awning window openings to about an inch.  With a forecast of continued rain overnight and a low of only 65 degrees F we knew it would not be the best night for sleeping.  Still, I love storms and enjoyed seeing/hearing nature’s power while I worked on blog posts for yesterday and today.

 

2014/05/10 (S) Goin To Goshen

We were up at 6 AM with our sights set on a 7:30 AM departure.  Most of the supplies that still needed to be loaded onto the bus were staged in the front vestibule, on the dining room table, or the bathroom counter.  It took several trips to get everything on board, including the cats, but it was an easy final loading process.  We are getting better at this with practice but it certainly helped having the bus parked with the front door opposite the front door of the house.

With everything on board we did the final preparations on the car and bus, pulled the shore power cord, and stowed it away.  We finished closing up the house, checked the lights on the coach and car (they were all working), arranged a few things on the interior, and were ready to roll.

The cats had already sought the safety of their travel locations under the front passenger seat even before I sat done in the driver’s seat.  The big Detroit lit right up and as soon as the oil pressure came up I engaged the high idle to make it easier to build the air pressure and switched the suspension to drive mode.  When the air dryer “sneezed” (purge valve opened) I turned off the high idle, pulled up the tag axle (to shorten the turning radius), put it in gear, and pulled out of our driveway.  It was 7:30 AM.  We made our way up to M-59 and headed west.

It was a chilly morning, though not as cold as earlier in the week when I reset the tire pressures and the TPMS sensors.  I quickly discovered that I had cold air coming in by my feet and shortly thereafter realized that I forgot to open the air supply to the louvers for the air-conditioner compressor compartment behind the front bumper.  When the louvers are open that compartment allows outside air to get into the bay under the driver’s seat and from there into the cockpit, especially at highway speeds.  The louvers require air pressure to close and prevent this air intrusion.  Rather than pull into a business or shopping center I decided to continue on to I-96 west and stop at the rest area at mile marker 112 which would allow an easy off/on just before reaching the Lansing area.

As I suspected, the air supply to the louvers was closed.  I usually shut off this circuit when parked to minimize leaks and auxiliary air pressure run time, but this is (obviously) not part of my mental “to do” list yet.  Every trip I say we need to create written checklists, one for departure and one for arrival, but we get busy and never follow through; at least we haven’t yet.

From the rest area we continued on I-96 west along the southern edge of Lansing, picked up I-69 at the southwest corner of town, and headed south towards Indiana.  It was a downhill run from there, or so it seemed, as the pyrometers were often near the bottom of the scale.  We exited onto US-6 and headed west towards Goshen, Indiana.  We picked this route so we could pick up US-33 north and come into the Goshen area from the southeast.  Our initial destination was a Walmart supercenter at the southeast corner of town on the east side of US-33.  Our plan was to meet up with Butch and Fonda who were driving in from Twelve Mile, Indiana.  From there we would have a short, but slow, drive up US-33 into the heart of Goshen and then east on Monroe Street to the Elkhart County 4-H Fairground.  It’s only a few miles but it is slow because of the heavy traffic that always seems to be present on this high density commercial/retail stretch of a two-lane US highway.

The Walmart "stables" on  US-33 southeast of Goshen, IN.

The Walmart “stables” on US-33 southeast of Goshen, IN.

We were in phone contact with Butch and Fonda so we knew their departure was delayed by business and bus issues.  We arrived somewhat ahead of our agreed rendezvous time, and decided to wait for them at the Walmart as long as we could without getting uncomfortable about the possibility of not getting to the fairground before the 2 PM arrival cutoff.   We did some shopping, had a bite of lunch, took some photographs, and played some games on our iPads while we waited.  The Walmart had a “stable” for the Amish buggies and it was full, with additional buggies tied up to the fence line.  You just don’t see that most places, but this is one of the things that is uniquely interesting about north central Indiana.  Butch and Fonda eventually got on the road and were making good progress but we decided around 1:15 PM to go on to the fairgrounds and try to meet up with them there.  That meant they would not have to stop at the Walmart and incur additional time delay.

Like most rallies, the Escapade requires rigs that want to park together to arrive together.  They also want the rigs identified in some way as being together.  For small groups (four or less) they wanted matching ribbons tied to the driver-side mirror.  For larger groups they wanted the arrival planned in advance with a placard in the window of each rig that identified the group and the rig number, 1 of n, 2 n, etc.  Although the Escapade did not provide a rendezvous area the arrival rate had slowed down by the time we pulled in and they allowed us to unhook our car and wait for our friends, who pulled in not more than 10 minutes behind us.

We had a nice chat with the parking crew while we waited and found out that some of them were members of the SKP Chapter 6 – Great Lakes, which covers Michigan.  We joined the Chapter at the 2010 Escapade at this very same fairground but have not yet made any of the rallies.  Chapter 6 is one of the oldest chapters in the Escapees RV a Club and will celebrate its 30th anniversary at a Labor Day rally this year.  The rally will be in Michigan and perhaps we will be able to finally attend.

We were directed to our adjacent parking spots on the east side of the infield of the horse track and got backed in with the assistance of the parking crew.  The fairground was well prepared for RVs on parts of the property that are not set up as permanent RV sites.  Electrical cables emerged from manhole covers and ran to outlet boxes on the ground and temporary water manifolds were placed alongside the power lines.  We only connected the shore power for now, having arrived with a full fresh water tank.  I dialed back the charger section of our Magnum 4024 inverter/charger to an AC input of 25 Amps before connecting the power through to the coach.  This limited the amount of power the charger section would use, ensuring that adequate power would be available for other essential coach functions such as the refrigerator, auxiliary air compressor, lights, coffee maker, and television sets.

We put out our patio awning to shade the passenger side of the coach from the afternoon sun and sat around for a while enjoying a snack of pretzels and almonds along with a tasty adult beverage (us, not them).  Linda and Fonda went for a walk while Butch and I fell asleep.  We woke up hungry and eventually decided to go out to dinner.  We took our car and since I was driving I had to pick the restaurant.  We ended up at a Chinese buffet and all ate too much.  We were surprised to see a lot of Amish buggies tied up outside the restaurant and even more surprised to see so many Amish inside enjoying the buffet.  I thought it was actually pretty cool, just unexpected.  By the time we got back to our buses we were satiated and tired.  We retired to our respective coaches for the evening.

 

2014/05/09 (F) Rally Ready

Today was all about preparing for the Escapees RV Club Escapade.  Large rallies, like the Escapades, are week-long events with non-stop activity from sunrise to well after sunset.  We like to stick to our way of eating, but there isn’t as much time to prepare meals at such events, so Linda spent much of the day preparing and pre-cooking most of our dinner meals for the week. Breakfast and lunch tend to be simpler meals with less cooking involved.  Part of her cooking today, however, was her yummy granola which we will have for breakfast most mornings.

I spent a good part of the day working at my desk on e-mail, website, and blog tasks.  I took occasional breaks to select clothes and stage other items to load on the bus.  On an afternoon break I topped off the coolant in the Aqua-Hot and hooked the car to the motorcoach.

After dinner I wrapped up my desk work, shut down my computers, and staged all of the electronics that still needed to go on the bus.  We relaxed for a while in the evening and by bedtime we were comfortable with our level of preparation and, with only a small number of things left to do, confident of an early departure in the morning.

 

2014/03/27 (R) Cover Up

With the return of high temperatures in the low 80’s and lows in the upper 50’s Williston Crossings’ maintenance crews have been busy pruning trees and bushes, clearing undergrowth, cutting grass, and painting the white light poles at all of the sites in the older/south section of the resort.  Many long-term residents have also been busy tending to the landscaping improvements they have made to their sites, including shrubs, flowers, herbs, and grass.  With an overnight low of 34 degrees F two nights ago, many residents were also bringing plants inside or trying to cover them up.  Even in north central Florida this winter seems determined to extend its influence well into spring.

Paper towel holder installed above kitchen sink behind fluorescent light fixture.

Paper towel holder installed above kitchen sink behind fluorescent light fixture.

Single-end mounting of paper towel holder.

Single-end mounting of paper towel holder.

This morning dawned heavily overcast and the forecast was for rain.  No matter; we had our morning coffee, read, worked on e-mails and websites, and finally had breakfast.  We had a couple of projects to tend to so we did those next.  First we installed the new paper towel holder in the kitchen.  We mounted it to the underside of the cabinet over the sink, behind the small fluorescent light fixture.  It is convenient to reach, even with wet hands, and definitely off the counter and out if the way.

 

 

 

 

Very little of the paper towel holder is visible.

Very little of the paper towel holder is visible.

Next up was the cover for the Fan-Tastic Vent motor.  The manual operation knob slides over a splined shaft on the motor and is retained by a small machine screw.  The knob has to be removed to allow the old cover to come off and the new one to go on.  It did not come off easily, but I coaxed it off without breaking anything.  When the two mounting screws that hold the cover were removed the whole motor assembly just fell out and dangled from the two power wires.  The drive shaft is also a splined connection that slips over the lift mechanism shaft and the power wires are attached with insulated spade connectors.  This design makes it easy to replace the motor if it fails.

The new motor cover for the Fan-Tastic ven fan in the bedroom.  We left the knob off.

The new motor cover for the Fan-Tastic ven fan in the bedroom. We left the knob off.

The biggest challenge in this little project, besides standing on a dual chamber air mattress to do the work, was simultaneously getting the drive shafts re-engaged, the cover plate holes lined up, and the mounting screws re-installed.  All of this alignment is done ‘blind’ as the mating parts are inside the unit where they cannot be seen.  But we got it back together without too much swearing.  The other difficulty was the walnut trim that surrounds the opening.  The way it is constructed it actually interferes with the knob.  We decided not to re-install the knob so I put the retaining screw back in the shaft and we stored the knob in one of the small bedroom storage cubbies.

Workers enclosing the rusted iron on the Pullman cars with wood.

Workers enclosing the rusted iron on the Pullman cars with wood.

The Lazydays RV dealership in Seffner, Florida (just east of Tampa /St. Pete) has been staging units in the new/north section of Williston Crossings RV Resort for the last couple of days.  The rain never materialized today and the clouds thinned as the day progressed.  We walked over to see any new units they had brought in since we were there yesterday.  On the way over I grabbed a couple of photos of the work being done on the old train cars that will eventually be rental cabins.  As you can see in these photos, they are reinforcing (encasing) all of the old structural iron, which is heavily rusted, with wood.

A wider view of the restoration work on the Pullman cars.

A wider view of the restoration work on the Pullman cars.

Lazydays had their entrance structure erected, a tent to shade the sales associates, and tables with chairs where folks could sit and relax.  All of the motorhomes were Class A’s and most of them had hitch-mounted telescoping flag poles flying Lazydays flags.  There were at least six additional motorhomes and another 5th Wheel trailer.  We looked at all of them and I photographed a few “features” that I thought were interesting.

The LazyDays RV display at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

The LazyDays RV display at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

Door latch for side-by-side residential refrigerator doors.

Door latch for side-by-side residential refrigerator doors.

One unit had a residential refrigerator with upper side-by-side doors and a bottom pull out freezer drawer.  There was nothing unusual about that; what caught my eye were the aftermarket latches Tiffin had installed to lock the upper doors together and lock the freezer drawer to the surrounding cabinet.  Very cool.  By evening we heard that both of the 2014 Tiffin Allegro Open Road motorhomes had been sold.  I suspect that made the whole “mini-show” worthwhile for Lazydays.

 

 

 

 

 

Same latch design used to lock freezer drawer.

Same latch design used to lock freezer drawer.

The other thing we finally did today was register for the 2014 Escapade, which is back at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds May 12 – 17.  Our first Escapade was there in September 2010 and we were back there for GLAMARAMA13 in September 2013.  As I have written in this blog previously, it is an excellent facility for rallies of 500 – 1,000 rigs.  We will be back there again in June for GLAMARAMA14.