Yesterday was the final day of our 2010 Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which consisted of morning coffee and donuts sponsored by Mac McCoy, one last chance to visit the vendors who had not already packed up and left, and the tour of the Heartland Recreational Vehicles factory. By noon we had all of the tables and chairs put away, and the building emptied out.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to get our motorhome back to some semblance of normality, stowing away rally materials in our bays, and sorting through leftover brochures, display materials, and notes we had hastily scribbled on slips of paper about interesting places to visit that our attendees had suggested, and good campgrounds they thought we might like to stop at someday.

Our dear friends Tom Owen and Diane Rojewski came by to chat for a while, and Frank Hinman popped in for a few minutes. Rumor control has it that there may be another visit to Tom and Diane’s houseboat in Key West in our future. Tom and Diane graciously invited us to stay at the houseboat two years ago, and we spent a wonderful week exploring Key West and the rest of the Florida Keys, kayaking, and playing tourist. We’re really looking forward to getting back down there again.

Soon after Tom and Diane left, Orv Hazelton stopped in, and we solved most of the troubles of the world; then Greg White came over to join us, and he had answers for the few dilemmas of mankind that Orv and I had not gotten to yet.

I spent a couple of hours reading over the rally feedback forms that we asked each attendee to fill out. There were a lot of glowing compliments about the rally, which are always nice, but also some good feedback on the different seminars we had, as well as suggestions for future rallies.

Terry and I read each and every feedback form, and give those suggestions serious consideration. We don’t always go with them, for various reasons, but we have incorporated several of our attendees’ suggestions into our rallies.

One comment that gets repeated frequently at every rally is that we have too many seminars at the same time, and that a person can’t attend one that interests them unless they miss another in the same time period.

One of the things that sets our events apart from many other RV rallies is that we focus on a broad spectrum of seminars. We had 60 different seminars at the rally, which is about average for one of our events. Not just vendor seminars, but also seminars on all kinds of other topics. At this rally we had seminars on bicycling, kayaking, traveling to Alaska, genealogy, Midwest travel destinations, RVing history, RV electrical systems, tire safety, weight safety, fire safety, and more!

True, sometimes there are conflicts when somebody wants to be at two different seminars held at the same time, but the flip side of that coin is that at least we offer plenty of options to choose from, to suit every interest. If we offered fewer seminars, and repeated them twice as some have suggested, we would drastically reduce the options for others who may be interested in something else. To us, more is better when it comes to seminars.  

Of course, we can’t please everybody; we had comments that people wanted more computer related seminars, such as the nine that Geeks on Tour presented, and comments from other folks who said they didn’t care about computer seminars, they wanted seminars on RV maintenance, or pet care, or crafts, or… you get the idea. The problem there is, of course, finding people qualified to teach those seminars. All we can do is to continue to find new seminar topics and new people to present them.

Comments were mixed on having the rally at a full hookup campground. Some people loved it, and some said they would have been just as happy at a fairgrounds, if the cost had been less. And, of course, there were folks who wanted the full hookups, but at fairgrounds prices. That just doesn’t happen!

We had 165 RVs registered the rally, as well as a dozen or so others that had not registered, but were here at the campground on a weekly or monthly basis, and signed up for the rally when they learned about it.

Most of our vendors reported good sales, and a few said that they made more money at our rally then they did at the big Newmar Kountry Klub rally the week before in Goshen, which had over 600 RVs.

With rally week behind us, Miss Terry and I plan to sleep late today and spend some time recharging our minds and bodies. We’re worn out, but we’re gratified that we have another successful rally behind us.

Thought For The Day – A ton of regret never made an ounce of difference.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m still doing, just plugging away on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, just like I have been most of the week. I wish I had something new and exciting to tell you about, but you probably wouldn’t find the details of adding paper to my HP laser printer or running spell check on a draft of an article all that thrilling, so I’ll spare you the details.

Yesterday afternoon I got away from my desk long enough to stop in at Heartland Recreational Vehicles for a quick visit with Director of Sales Coley Brady to work out the details of a factory tour for folks attending our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. We have such a busy schedule of seminars during the rally that we couldn’t find the time for the tour until Friday morning, after the rally officially ends.

Anybody who wants to take the tour can meet in the main vendor room at 9:30 a.m., and a representative from the factory will lead a caravan the couple of miles from Elkhart Campground to the factory. Even if you’re not in the market for a new RV, it’s always interesting to see how the different companies build them. We learn something new with every factory tour we take. Elkhart Campground has plenty of room if you want to stay around for the tour, and maybe hang out with all of us who will still be here for the weekend.

Later in the afternoon, we went to Ryan’s Buffet, another favorite restaurant of ours, for dinner with Greg and Jan. The food was good, and the conversation with our friends was fun and interesting, as always.

I am going to take a break for a little while today, to go to the gun show in Shipshewana with Greg, and drool over all of the big boy toys we can’t afford and have no room for anyway.

While we’re doing that, Jan and Miss Terry are going to have some girl time and check out the big American Countryside Market. We were sad to learn that this big indoor bazaar, which features Amish foods and crafts, will be closing its doors in early September, and that its future is unknown. We always enjoyed browsing all of the vendor stalls and admiring everything on sale there.

I think parking everybody who will be coming in for our rally is going to be pretty easy, since a good number of the people who registered for the rally are already here, and more are coming in every day. Several people have stopped by to say hello, and while I haven’t have much time to visit, I’m looking forward to getting the paper done so we can get out and have some fun.

I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel; by last night I had 25 of 36 pages of the new issue finished, and I’ll wrap it up by Monday, giving Miss Terry plenty of time to proof it, and to get it to our printer on Tuesday.

I’m not the only one working hard. Bad Nick posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Good parenting is only gained by experience, and therefore only available to grandchildren.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

I spent part of yesterday working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, which has to be at the printer on Tuesday of next week. I need to knock this one out, so I can concentrate on all of the details we still need to finish up for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering, which is less than three weeks away.

In the early afternoon, our pal Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint stopped by to visit and welcome us back to Elkhart. Michele said she has been getting a lot of work in from Gypsy Journal readers, and as soon as she finishes one of her custom full body paint jobs on one RV, it’s time to start on another.

I like to see a small businessperson succeed, and while Michele says we have had a lot to do with that, I know that word of her excellent work and affordable pricing has spread far beyond our modest reach due to her many satisfied customers, who are so thrilled with the results.

After Michele left, I talked to our screen printer and started the ball rolling for our rally T-shirts. If you’re coming to the rally and want a shirt to commemorate the event, please send me a quick e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and let me know the sizes and how many shirts you want. You can pick them up and pay for them at the rally, but we just need an idea of how many shirts we need to order in each size.

Speaking of T-shirts, check out our friend Marlene Hinman in her one-of-a-kind shirt from our Arizona rally. Marlene won the shirt as a door prize, and since it was a larger size than she wears, she took it apart and rebuilt it as a sleeveless style. How cool!

Later in the afternoon, I had a meeting at Heartland Recreational Vehicles with Coley Brady, Director of Sales, and Jim Beletti, Director of Owners Interests. We are trying to set up a factory tour for our rally attendees, and if we can work out the timing, it would be an interesting opportunity to see how a top quality fifth wheel is built.

We also stopped by Elkhart Bicycle Shop and arranged to have owner Steve Peterson present a seminar on Bicycling For RVers at the rally. Steve will be talking about the different styles of bicycles on the market, how to choose the right bike for your needs, and different methods of transporting your bicycle as you travel.

We were only back at Elkhart Campground for a short time before Greg White called and said it was time for dinner, so we went to Lunker’s in Edwardsburg, Michigan with Greg and Jan.  Lunker’s is a great place, where you can buy everything from a shotgun to a fishing road, not to mention a kayak, a tent, or a sleeping bag.

They also have a great restaurant called the Angler’s Inn, and it’s one of our favorites in this area. The fare ranges from burgers and several varieties of fish, to such exotic choices as alligator tail, frog legs, buffalo burgers, ostrich, and elk.

They were pretty busy, but our server was very efficient, and took good care of us.  We topped off our meal with excellent slices of Totally Turtle Cheesecake. Yummy!

While I was busy with all of that, Bad Nick posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Fighting Fire With Fire. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – It’s not the pace of life that concerns me, it’s the sudden stop at the end.

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When we woke up Friday morning it was raining hard and the wind was blowing. Obviously, we were not going to do any traveling in that kind of weather, so we rolled over and snuggled back down under the covers.

The storm hung on all day long. Sometimes the rain pounded down hard, and other times it was just a steady drizzle, but whatever it as doing, it was not conducive to being outside or traveling.

I spent the day getting a lot of things done online, including loading up Carlyle Lehman’s new Focal Wood website. Carlyle is the Amish craftsman who built the custom workstations, bookcase, and dinette table for our Winnebago motorhome.

I stopped out to see Carlyle at his place in Nappanee a few days ago, and he said that ever since I told our readers about him in the blog, and then Ron and Brenda Speidel mentioned him in their Don’t Replace, Refurbish seminar at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally last month, he has been swamped with work. When I was at his place this week, he had three motorhomes there getting things installed. That’s great, because Carlyle does excellent work and I would recommend him to anybody wanting custom RV furniture.

Besides working on Carlyle’s website, I re-entered all of the telephone numbers into my Blackberry Storm that I had lost when I updated its software the other day. Note to self – back up the darned Blackberry!

It was a lazy day, and sometime in the afternoon I decided that a nap was in order. I stretched out on the couch, and had just fallen into a very good dream when the phone rang. It was Greg White, asking if we were up for dinner. We’re always up for dinner, so we piled into their truck and headed for the local Ryan’s Buffet.

It was the first time I had been outside all day, and the entire campground was one huge puddle! In fact, all of Elkhart was one huge puddle! Greg and Jan had braved the weather to drive their pickup down to Decatur, Indiana to tour the American Coach factory, and they said the wind had been strong all the way down and all the way back. We were glad we had decided to stay put and wait for the storm to move on.

Today the rain is supposed to be over, but the wind may hang on. We would really like to get on the road, and we probably will unless it’s just too windy. But just as I said in yesterday’s blog, there is no place we have to be anytime soon, so we have the luxury of staying or going, whichever seems best.

Thought For The Day – Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience.

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