The FMCA rally is great.
First of all, we met up with friends from the hunting and fishing club: Ray and Donna; Jim and Joyce; Dennis and Susan; Bud, Joanne and Steve. It was good seeing them all again and we caught up on things over dinner at a local Indian Casino. Everyone seems to be doing well.
With over 1,700 rigs attending, this is a huge rally. With some of the rigs literally parked in mud, we realize how lucky we are to be parked on grass with an electrical hookup. Even with the sprinklers going on every night, it’s not bad.
We finally got the chance to spray-wash the Jeep. What a mess. The picture on this site doesn’t do it justice, there were two layers of mud added the day we left Santa Paula. In the dry desert air, the mud dried and was hard to get off. It looks clean in comparison, but we’ll have to get after it again. At least passers-by have stopped commenting on it.
The classes we attended are interesting. Alcoa is here and the seminar on aluminum wheels was informative. So was the seminar on awnings, which I will now pay more attention to. The Allison Transmission class quickly fell apart when the audience off 350 cranky old guys started shooting questions at the presenter. The Allison guy was knowledgeable, but he lost control.
The theme of the rally is the Nifty 50s and various FMCA chapters participated in a parade. Although everyone was fully clothed, some of what we saw was not fit for publishing on this site. There are a few pictures out there for anyone interested. Elvis seemed to be a big hit.
Now that we have attended a few of these rallies, Jeanne and I feel we are on the leading-edge of the baby-boomers about to retire. Flashing on this, we speculated on future themes for FMCA parades. The Summer of Love? Woodstock Revival? Flower Power? Maybe the factory representative from Zig-Zag will host a seminar. One thing is certain, I won’t have enough hair to pull into a ponytail.
Nirvana! There is a brand new Walmart Supercenter in Indio and it looks like the locals haven’t really discovered it yet. We went shopping and what would have cost us $150 at Vons we bought at Walmart for $96. Ever so slowly, Walmart is moving into Southern California. Best of all, it will be only a few blocks from our campsite over the next ten days.