Yesterday we spent part of the day unloading all of the stuff from our van that we used at the Hershey RV Show, and repacking it into the storage bays of our motorhome. It was a hot, humid day, and by the time we got done, we were both wringing wet. Back inside our Winnebago, the air conditioning sure felt wonderful!

The only good thing to come out of the RV show is that we managed to give away over three thousand sample copies of the Gypsy Journal, which gave us a lot of extra room in the van, and hopefully some of them will bring us some new subscribers.

After we had cooled off and cleaned up, we drove to the post office to mail out several orders that had come in online. From there, we went to the WalMart SuperCenter in nearby Palmyra to pick up a few things. Then we stopped at the Lowe’s next door. By the time we were done shopping, we were both hungry, and we decided to try the Emperor Buffet in the same shopping center.

We are always looking for good Chinese buffets in the different areas of the country where we travel. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give this place about a 6. We’ve been to worse, but we’ve certainly been to a lot better.

We took the long way back to the Thousand Trails campground, driving through the charming little town of Annville for one last look at some of the neat old architecture to be found in this area. I just love these old row houses!

Except for the time wasted at the RV show, we have enjoyed our visit to this part of Pennsylvania, and we wish we had more time here. But sadly, it’s time to move on. Our Thousand Trails/NACO membership allows us two weeks at a preserve, then we can go to directly to another one if we want to.

In this case, we won’t be going to another Thousand Trails right now. Instead,  we’re going to spend a couple of days at Round Top Campground in Gettysburg. We met the manager, Carrie Freeman, at the RV show when she was running a vendor booth across from us, and we really hit it off with her. So when Carrie invited us to stop in on our way south, we quickly said yes.

Its about 60 miles from here to Gettysburg, so we’ll have an easy trip. We like days like this much more than those 400+ mile days we had on our trip east a few weeks ago.

Thought For The Day – Over prepare, then go with the flow.

The Hershey RV Show finally ended yesterday, and it was the longest week of our lives. We are so glad that it is over! We have worked a lot of RV rallies over the years, but this was our first RV show. I’m pretty sure it will be our last, too.

The good news is that, according to the folks running the Hershey Show, they had record attendance. Uh huh. Here is a picture of the vendor aisle where our booth was yesterday about mid-morning. Sunday was supposed to be the other “super busy day” of the rally. Does this look familiar? If not, look at my last couple of blog posts. Oh yeah, another record setting attendance day!

My friend Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart was displaying this really cool 1915 Model A camper at the show. Pretty cool, huh?

Al set a record of his own at the show yesterday morning, when absolutely nobody showed up for his always popular 100 Years of RVs seminar. I didn’t want Al to feel too bad about that, so I also had nobody at all at my Meandering Down The Highway seminar at 2:30 p.m. 

After about 15 minutes of sitting in the room alone, I began packing up my computer and projector, and one of the show dweebs poked her head inside and told me I had to stay in the room in case anybody did eventually did show up.  Well, you know how well that worked out, don’t you?

The show was supposed to end at 5 p.m., and vendors were not allowed to start packing up until then. But there were no customers and we were way past fed up, so I went back to our booth and we started packing things away and taking them out to the van.

We were about finished when another show representative came by and told us that we were breaking their rules by leaving early. Yeah, and your point is?

In looking over our totals for the show, we have taken in much more money on the very first day of many RV rallies with only a few hundred RVs attending than we did in our week at the “biggest RV show in the world!

While the show was a total bust, we could have lived with that if the folks putting on the event were more organized, and treated their vendors with some respect. But when they have so many rules that even they can’t agree on them; when you arrive and get a hassle just to get your name badges and parking permits; when nobody can tell you even the most basic information about where to park to unload your inventory; when they  treat you like an idiot and blow smoke up your butt about the numbers, it’s just too much to deal with.

But at least it’s over, and we’ll spend today licking our wounds and getting some much needed rest. We have a few more days here at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, and then we’re going to Gettysburg for a couple of days before we continue on to Washington, D.C.

Somebody e-mailed me to say that they were sorry to hear that we would not be returning to this area because the show was a bust, because there is so much to see and do here that we would enjoy. No problem, we love this area and we will be back again for sure. We will just spend our time exploring and having fun, not stuck at the RV show.

Thought For The Day – It’s hard to be nostalgic when you can’t remember anything.

Today is the last day of the Hershey RV Show, and it couldn’t end soon enough for us. We are worn out physically and mentally, and just want to go to bed and sleep for about 48 hours straight.

All week long the show promoters and other vendors have been telling us “Just wait until Friday and Saturday. This place will be a madhouse!” Well, Friday came and went, and it was nothing special. A little busier than earlier in the week, but still very slow by RV rally standards.

Yesterday (Saturday) the Giant Center was packed in the outside RV display area, and on the upper indoor vendor area. But for much of the day down on the main vendor floor, it was a still pretty slow. We would have occasional rushes, when the crowds were so heavy that nobody could stop and talk to a vendor even if they had wanted to (and most didn’t want to), but then things would slow back down again.

And just like the rest of the week, by 6 p.m. everybody had pretty much disappeared, and all of us vendors spent the next two hours staring at each other across the aisles. When we got back to our motorhome, parked at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, Terry added up our sales figures for the day, and we had taken in even less money on Saturday then we had on Friday! So much for the predictions of huge sales Friday and Saturday.

The folks running the show claim that last year they had over 37,000 attendees, and said this year the show was going to be even bigger. Yesterday, they said that from Wednesday to Friday of this week, they had just over 15,000 people coming through the gates. I very much doubt that figure is accurate, based upon what the vendors saw. And even if it is a true figure, there’s no way they will come anywhere near that 37,000 figure by the end of the day today. A lot of vendors and show attendees have told us that the show was much better when it was held in Harrisburg. I think it would have to have been, because it darn sure couldn’t have been any worse!

At least we got to make some new friends while we were here, and we also got to see some folks we have not seen in a while. Yesterday, Paul and Marti Dahl stopped in to say hello, and it was nice to talk to them. Paul is a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, and Marti is a nursing home administrator. They are counting the days until they can retire and travel fulltime in their Class A motorhome. 

Another couple we got to talk to for a while were blog readers Ed and Blondie, whose last name fails me now, I’m afraid. But they were fun people, and they also sat in on my Highway History and Back Road Mystery seminar.

Sean Magee really flattered us when he told us that he drove 90 minutes to come to the show, just to see Terry and me. I really felt a connection with Sean, he’s a very special guy who has a lot of love for his fellow man, and especially children.

There were others who stopped by our vendor booth to say hello, and I’m sorry, both Terry and I are so foggy right now that we just cannot remember everybody’s names. But we really were happy to see all of you, and we really appreciate the time you took to stop and introduce yourselves.

Today is a shorter day, only 8 hours instead of the 11 we’ve been working all week. Of course, then we have to pack everything up and load the van before we’re finally through with this sad excuse for an RV show. Miss Terry and I have an agreement that if I get forgetful someday and say I want to come back here again, she can bash my head in with a frying pan, and then drag my bleeding carcass out to the curb and leave it.

Thought For The Day – Hard work never killed anyone, but why give it a chance?

Okay, maybe I didn’t shave my legs, but I was still up before 7 a.m., and I even brushed my teeth! That has to count for something, doesn’t it?

Why was I up at such an ungodly hour, you may ask? Because we’re working a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show this week – America’s “largest” RV show. I know it’s the largest, because it says so right there on their website. Uh huh, and I stand six feet tall, weigh 100 pounds, and have a full head of hair.  It must be true, because you read it right here on my blog, right?

Here is a picture I took about 10 a.m. yesterday morning of the aisle where our vendor booth is located. Everybody you see in this picture is a vendor, except for the person in the gray sweatshirt in the rear left side of the aisle.

Here’s another picture I took of our vendor aisle, from the opposite direction, just before 11 a.m. Hey, it’s a customer, the guy in the blue jeans in the rear! Everyone else you see is a vendor.

About 2 p.m. it started to rain, driving all of the people who were outside looking at RVs inside the building. We had a rush!

And here’s the vendor aisle just before 7 p.m. The guy on the left with the white hat on is a customer, the guy on the right, fiddling with the bike is a vendor. Do you see a pattern here?  While we did have a few (very few) little busy spurts, most of the day I could have fired a shotgun down the aisle and never hit anybody.

Last year, the Hershey Show claimed to have 37,000 attendees. Unless they all show up in one really big bus today or tomorrow, I don’t think they’ll be breaking any records soon.

Vendor hours are from 9 a.m., to 8 p.m., and if you have never stood on top of an ice rink for eleven hours, trust me, it’s an experience you don’t need to seek out. Just as they did Wednesday evening. a lot of vendors gave up and left a little after 6 p.m., and the place was almost empty. The show directors came on the public address system several times, warning vendors that they were not allowed to leave before 8 p.m. Many ignored them, because they had already left.

Miss Terry wanted to stick it out until closing time, and I grudgingly agreed, until somebody from the show came through the vendor area “taking attendance.” Apparently, if you leave early, they fine you, and if you won’t pay the fine, you can’t come back next year. Now, anybody who knows me well knows that the best way to get the Nixter to do something it to tell me I can’t do it! As soon as Terry told me about the attendance taker, I was packed up and out of there in about five minutes!

It is totally asinine to expect vendors to stand around on a cold ice rink for that many hours a day if they don’t have any customers to sell to! A longtime vendor told me that the number of vendors has dropped dramatically at this show in the last few years. Why do you think that is?

They tell us that today and Saturday will be killer days, with customers pouring in the doors, but it would really have to do a dramatic turnaround before we would ever consider coming back to this show. Lost time is lost time, and you can never get it back, no matter how well you do the next day. Never say never, but I just don’t see it happening for us.

Thought For The Day – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

Click Here To Register For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We’re tired, and we’ve just gotten started! Yesterday was the first public day of the Hershey RV Show, and we spent eleven hours in our booth, greeting people, passing out sample copies of the Gypsy Journal, and selling a few subscriptions, books, and CDs.

The main vendor area is on the floor of the Giant Center, which is a hockey rink. They laid down thin sheets of floor covering over the ice, and we added a 1/2 inch thick layer of interlocking cushion mats in our vendor booth, but by the end of the day we were really feeling cold. Today we’ll wear a second layer of socks, and bring long sleeve shirts or sweaters.

We saw several vendors we know from other events, and quite a few of our subscribers and blog readers came by the booth to say hello, including Ed Meyer and Theresa Davis, Mike and Joyce Neilson, Nancy Shaw, and several others whose names I’m afraid I just can’t remember this late in the evening.

We also saw our pal Flakey the Clown, who was tooling around on his Blue Ox powered cart, bringing smiles to young and old alike. I’m not sure if he’s directing traffic in this picture, or telling his rabbit to sit and stay.

A lot of the folks stopping by our booth were either brand new RVers, or wannabes who were at the show checking out the RVs on the market and trying to decide what’s right for them. Since there is no “perfect” RV, it’s hard to find the best rig for you, and going to a big RV show is a good way to look at everything on the market and get an idea of what might suit your needs and lifestyle.

I did my Highway History and Back Road Mystery seminar in the afternoon, which I always have fun with, and at least one person liked it well enough to go back to our booth and buy a copy of my book by the same name.

Our sales for the day were nothing to write home about, but I think we took in enough to cover the cost of our fuel to get here. We also passed out several hundred sample copies of the paper, and we know that when we do that, it’s like planting seeds. Some folks will never get around to reading them, some will read them and forget about it, and some will like what they see well enough to subscribe. Usually a week or two after an event we’ll see a spurt of new subscriptions coming in, and then more will trickle in over the next month or so.

The official vendor hours are from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., but by about 6 p.m. things had slowed way down, and several of the vendors closed up shop for the day. We hung in there, and by 7 p.m. it was pretty much a ghost town.

When we left the Giant Center, we stopped for a quick dinner at a nearby diner, then headed back to our motorhome at the Thousand Trails campground. We got home about 9:30, pretty worn out from our long day. But we still had e-mail to check, Terry had to total up our day’s receipts, and I had to write this blog post before we could even think about bed.

Today we’ll be up and back at it early again. It’s going to be a long show!

Thought For The Day -The less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

Click Here To Register For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally!