Madison, WI - You Gotta Get Those Slides In

The Rally is over and we’re closing up the RV to start the journey home. Since we have no hook-ups and are just parked here on a grassy field with hundred’s of other RV’s, we don’t have much to do to get ready to rock and roll. We just need to bring in our 2 slides and hook-up the Jeep. We had an appointment to weigh our RV at 9:45 so we had a leisurely breakfast knowing we had more than enough time to do all we needed. We have 2 checklists: one for Gary outside and my list for the inside. I checked mine all off and was just about ready to go.

Here we are all lined up on the grass field. Very nice locale - grass is always nice to park on. We are the 6th RV from the left hand side, to the right of the second white rig. We were in the front row of our section and had great views since no one was in front of us. We have a 35’ long RV, a size that we call a ‘sweet spot’, big enough for 2 people to be comfortable in for 9 months, yet small enough to be able to camp in National Park campgrounds. Were we the smallest rig at this Rally? Heck, no, there were actually some 22’ RV’s but these were few. However, we saw many more 40’+ rigs than we saw 22’ rigs. There were even quite a few 45’ rigs with 2 axles in the rear. I would love to live in a 45’ rig but I sure wouldn’t want to drive down the highway in one nor maneuver in some of the campgrounds we’ve found with a 45’ rig. Whoo-eee.

One of our neighboring RV’s is owned by an older couple, Sandy and Chuck, who have a home in the Phoenix area but travel extensively. When they started RV’ing, they were going to rotate driving the RV in 3-hour shifts but he liked it so much that he actually did most of the driving. Last year they drove up to Alaska and worked up there in and RV park. When it came time to drive back south, he began but, after about an hour, he asked her to drive since he was having a hard time seeing the side of the road. As it turns out, he has macular degeneration and will probably be blind soon. She has driven every mile since. They are full of life and we hope to meet up with them in the Phoenix area this winter. Their RV is the first white one from the left in the shot above.

Gary and I were in the process of hooking up the Jeep and talking with the guy next to us when Sandy came over and asked if we could come over to help them get their slide in. It was their living room slide and therefore about 10’ long and 3’ wide, sticking out of the side of their RV. Sure can’t roll down the highway with a slide out.

Gary and Jack, the other guy, rushed over to help. I stayed behind to get our RV ready since it was 9:15 and we were due for the weighing at 9:45. They reviewed the manuals, peered under the slide to understand the mechanics and got our their tools.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get the Jeep ready to tow but notice that the new tow bar cover we’ve bought and had installed here at the Rally is not working as designed. The mechanic who had installed it had made several grievious errors and we will be taking this up with the company. (More on this story later.) Finally, I just rolled it up and tied it down.

To make a long story short, they cranked the slide in, we got to our weighing and all was well. Sandy and Chuck then drove off to a local RV repair facility.

We had no hook-ups here at this Rally. We could have gotten electric hook-ups but it would have cost considerably more and, being ‘cheap’ as I am, we decided to forego those. Thus we can use our batteries for electric power with a diesel generator to restore these. We also arrived with a full clean water tank and empty grey and black tanks. The goal is to be able to stay in our spot the full 6 days of the Rally without having to either replenish our clean water nor empty our black or grey tanks. And, we did - with room to spare. We could have gone a 7th day. Right in front of our rig on the grass was a water fountain which got heavy use the last day of the Rally with people who had run out of clean water and were filling 5 and 6 gallon jugs at a time. We are staying at a full-service campground tonight and will be able to fill and empty there.

Finally, before we left, I rolled out our bedroom slide to get to my shorts, which are in a drawer in the slide, changed and we were off. You know where this story is heading, don’t you? Sure enough, before we got onto the main road, some other RV driver honked at us, we stopped and - holy Toledo, I had left our bedroom slide out. That could have had some awful repercussions. Oof-da mega. I am so embarassed - I almost didn’t put this incident into the blog but - ah, it did happen.

We drove Southwest, over the mighty Mississippi and down to a campground in Amana, another grassy field. Here we found ourselves surrounded by another Rally, for RV’s with a Freightliner chassis. And, you can guess, lots of the people at this Rally had driven down from Madison right from the FMCA Rally where we had been. And, some of them had been at a pre-rally for their type of RV. Imagine, beginning with a Winnebago pre-Rally, then going to the FMCA Rally, then driving down for the Freightliner post-Rally. Too much rallying for me. I can only learn so much. But, we did get to see the Freightliner chassis which they had brought down.

Again, we got the front row with the view.

But, it was not all grass and you can see the white stony, sandy mixture on the campground roads. Sure enough, it was plenty dusty. Here’s an RV leaving the park with a full head of steam and - dust.