We had a mostly pleasant 2 1/2 days in Gillette, WY. We were camped at Cam-Plex, the Campbell County Fairgrounds which have very good convention facilities. This was the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA). This association was formed in 1963 by some dedicated pioneers in this style of travel, to enable motor home owners to have a social network. This evolved into many other benefits, programs and services, and these now annual conventions. We have been members since 1994 and have been to a total of 5 international conventions: Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Perry, GA, Minot, ND, and now Gillette, WY. There were said to be 2500 motor homes that came to this one. So about 5000 people for three days of exhibits, seeing the new motor homes on display, seminars of various types, social times, and two grandstand shows. Before the recession, there would be more like 3500-4000 motor homes that would come. Several very large RV manufacturers bit the dust during this time, and some were bought and incorporated into other companies. So the number of manufacturers that are now in business has declined. But the enthusiasm of the motor home owners in attendance at this event does not seem to have declined.
The first day - Thursday - was really great - warm and sunny with light breezes. We did most of the activities listed above. We toured the new RVs - saw some really nice new, innovative floor plans. There is a trend to downsizing and some interesting new options are available. We attended several seminars, and walked through the vendor exhibits.
We did buy one thing - a new portable satellite dish that is in this very cute little case. You connect it to your receiver with a coaxial cable (the connection is outside the RV - very easy), run through the dish set-up process, and voila! TV magically appears. I kind of smile about this because we had a portable dish when we first got DirecTV in 1994. The set-up was more difficult then, but same principle. We currently have a dome satellite dish on top of the RV, but we bought this new dish for several reasons. The most important one: It is often very handy to have a satellite dish you can move to a place with an unobstructed view of the sky - any tree will play havoc with the signal, and campgrounds have lots of trees! We like to have TV available, especially during baseball season and for news. So, that's what we bought.
Friday morning we had a storm move through with a tremendous downpour. We were camped in a field (not enough paved or gravel RV spaces at the fairgrounds - there never are enough spaces), so many of us were camped in several fields. When we arrived it was dry and nice. By the end of Friday morning, it was muddy, although we were on fairly high ground and so it wasn't bad. The rain stopped and the rest of the day was OK, although it rained again in the evening.
It is now Saturday evening. This morning it rained again, then it stopped. More mud, and as coaches were departing they were leaving pretty deep muddy ruts. We did two seminars in the morning, then looked at the weather radar, thought about what that field would soon look like, and decided to leave. We successfully drove out of the field, and drove to a nearby Walmart where we hooked our car up to the RV. JUST as we finished, the predicted storm moved in - very dark skies and the rain, wind and hail pelted the area. We were very fortunate - the hail was pea-sized, and we were well-positioned in the parking lot to ride it out. Don't know how much rain fell, but lots! The straight-line wind was at least 50 miles per hour.
The bottom line was, we think we made a really good decision to leave the convention when we did, and to stay off the highway until the storm passed; We did miss the finale - a grandstand musical show....which had to be moved indoors. We are in Buffalo, WY, tonight, and it is full of motor homes that were at the convention. We heard that at least one RV had to be towed out of the mud. I'll bet it was more than that!
We have heard and read about the damaging storms that passed through Minneapolis yesterday, and we think that there are going to be more, maybe, in fact, the same one that passed through Gillette earlier today. So we hope it will not be as bad as the previous one, and wish everyone well in Minneapolis!
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