And then the rains came.

What fun would an RV rally be without rain? Just as there seems to be an unwritten law that says every RV park in the United States must be located within a stone’s throw of a railroad track, that same governing body has apparently decreed that there can be no RV rally without precipitation.

We have been here in Casa Grande for almost a month, and I don’t think we’ve seen more than two or three raindrops in all of that time. But Saturday night it began to rain. And then it rained some more. And some more.

By the time our hardworking parking crew was ready to start work at 8 a.m., the grounds was getting pretty muddy. Bringing in 95 heavy RVs sure didn’t help matters any. The hard rain stopped, but we had several brief showers during the day just to remind us that we were not in the clear yet.

I have to give Don Hankins and our parking crew some well deserved praise here. They slogged around in the mud for hours, getting RVs parked, listening to the occasional cranky RVer who didn’t want to park anyplace wet (I think the closest dry place is San Antonio right now), and they just kept on smiling and working all thorough it. 

The Gourd Festival was still going on Sunday, so our people had to work around what we have come to call the gourdheads. I never knew there were so many kinds of gourds in the world, and so many creative things people could do with them. But I have to be honest, anyone who is so fanatical about gourds that they would have personalized gourd license plates, or have “Gourd Princess” tattooed on their boob (don’t ask my how I know this, but it wasn’t a pretty sight), has to be, well, out of their gourd!

While the parking crew was busy outside, the registration crew was working just as hard inside, getting folks signed in. Because the fairgrounds had double booked the day, the gourd folks still had all of the main buildings, but we got a little quarter size Quonset hut to use for registration. It was amazing to me how many people they were able to move through there in such a short time.

By the end of the day we had 95 RVs here for the rally, and many more scheduled to arrive today. Unfortunately, due to the double booking, there are still a lot of Gourd Festival RVs on the fairgrounds, most of them parked smack in the center of our vendor area. And they have shown no indication of moving anytime soon. This makes it very frustrating for our parking crew and vendors. I will be having yet another visit with the fairgrounds staff this morning to try and get that issue resolved.  

This is our third year here at the Pinal County Fairgrounds, and while the new manager is trying very hard, we have begun to doubt that the ongoing problems will ever be corrected. There just seems to be too many people “in charge” of something but not willing to stand up on their hind legs and take responsibility for actually doing anything. For example, even though we are here and the rally is happening, we still do not have the contract that we were promised when we paid our deposit a year ago.

We have been talking to the manager of the fairgrounds in Yuma, Arizona as a possible location for our next rally, and looking at other options as well. While we’ve been to Yuma many times in the past, we have never actually visited the fairgrounds. We plan to do that once we wrap things up here. If you have been to any RV events at the Yuma fairgrounds, I’d appreciate your input on the facilities there.

Thought For The Day - Every path has a few puddles.

We’ve been running at full steam for two or three weeks now, and it is beginning to take a toll on my worn out old body. For the last couple of days I have had a huge knot in my gut and quite a bit of discomfort. I know it’s just stress. I’m a Type A person, and while I usually thrive on stress and chaos, sometimes it gets the best of me.

Now that we have all of the preliminary work done and the rally is almost here, hopefully I can relax a little bit and things will ease up. We have a lot of good folks arriving already to help out with the parking, registration, and other rally duties.

The annual Gourd Festival is going on here at the Pinal County Fairgrounds, and the place has been packed with people. Yesterday we walked down to the main area and checked out some of the gourds on display. I had no idea gourds came in so many shapes and sizes, or that there are so many people into collecting, carving, and painting gourds.

Yesterday Danny and Kay Brown, longtime blog readers, stopped in to introduce themselves and say hello, and we had a nice chat. Soon after they left, Jim and Lisa Haveron came by to visit, and Terry gave them a tour of the bus.

Soon afterward, our good friends Mike and Pat McFall arrived. Mike and Pat are PressurePro vendors, and pull their fifth wheel with a beautiful Volvo semi. I met them in the parking lot and rode in with them. Mike and Pat have been here before and know their way around the fairgrounds, but that gave me an excuse to ride in their truck.

When we visited them at their lot in Mission, Texas a few weeks ago, a cat had wandered in from somewhere and wouldn’t go away. Mike said they really did not need or want a cat, and they were hoping it would wander away before they left. But I know that soft hearted friend of mine, so I wasn’t surprised at all when Pat said “Look who came with us,” and pointed to the cat sleeping peacefully in the truck. Mike wrote a post about the cat in his blog a while back, check out his story about his New Friend. Of course, as fate would have it, the cat turns out to be very pregnant, so we may have some birthing taking place during the rally. Mike and Pat have always given some very nice door prizes at our rallies, but I told him kittens are not considered door prize material!

It wasn’t long after Mike and Pat arrived that Phil and Ann Botnick pulled in. This great couple has been to all three of our Arizona rallies, as well as our Eastern rally in Ohio in September. Phil is a top rated RV tech, and by the time he was parked, he had people lined up needing his services.

Once we had everyone parked, faithful readers and hardworking volunteers Mike and Elaine Loscher invited us out to dinner. It was nice getting away from the fairgrounds for a while and just relaxing with good friends. Thanks Mike and Elaine, I needed that.

Thought For The Day - Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.

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