Wow! This boot camp is rather amazing. Remembering that this is for newbies, I was surprised that there seem to be between 75 and 100 attendees. We are camped at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds, which has about 270 permanent RV sites, and can accommodate up to 900 rigs. We had to wait in line to get parked.
We're parked on grass, and have water and electric. This is one of their temporary sites, but the fairgrounds does this often enough that everything is working fine.
We are, however, about 50 yards from a very active rail line. Steve, of course, takes out his hearing aids and sleeps like a rock. The trains didn't really bother me, except last night during a storm. Thunder woke me up and it was raining. The wind was blowing, although the motorhome next to us was taking most of the force. So I'm about to fall back to sleep when I hear the roar of a train, which is the sound they warn you about during tornadoes. It took a few beats before I decided it really was a train and went back to sleep.
There is a stream between us and the rail tracks. It looks like it's just a drainage ditch, but its a clear flowing stream. Yesterday there was a family of mallards gathered there and tonight there were Canadian geese. It seems to drain the field we're in quite well, as there is no mud, even though it has rained the last couple of days.
Our view out our window is certainly not our best, but gives you an idea of the variety of vehicles people full time in.
On the left is a semi truck with sleeping quarters that is licensed as a motorhome. On the right is a box van that resembles a moving van and may be an old homemade motorhome. Farther ahead you see trucks towing fifth wheels and motorhomes. There are also truck campers, van campers, and maybe a car camper or two. I would say the majority of vehicles are motor homes.
The Boot Camp precedes an Escapees's rally that they call an Escapade. It's a week of classes and social events. The classes cover everything from insurance to legal to medical to crafts to maintenance. They repeat a lot of the information covered in the boot camp throughout the week. Steve will be heading to Dayton, Ohio, at the end of this coming week, so we won't be staying for the Escapade. If we did, we'd definitely be on information overload.
There is another RV group, RV Dreams, that is holding a rally here in the fall. They will offer driving classes before the rally and we're going to try and get signed up for those. This group was recommend by Diane and Roger, cousins of the Robison clan.
We will get our rig weighed tomorrow and find out how out of balance we are. We don't think we'll be overweight, but we'll find out.
I did finally take some better pictures of our new desk and table.
We're really happy with the way they turned out. They work well for us. The picture below shows the desk and how the chairs will fit under it when we bring in the slides. The desk is permanently installed, while the table folds up.
We've learned a lot this weekend and I know we still have more to learn. But so far we haven't found out that we've done something extremely stupid and expensive, which is good news.
Obi's fast asleep on Steve's lap while Steve's working on the computer. My lap just isn't level enough for him to sleep on. He likes to rest his chin on the desk while he sleeps.
Time to get to bed so I can get up for an 8 am class. Fortunately tomorrow's the last day of class and I can sleep in a little on Monday before we head for home.
Take care,
Deb
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