Golden Spike Rally Day Zero

I was up early yesterday, but had a relaxing morning until time to gather with the Golden Spike Group at Walmart, West of town.  Just as I walked out the rig to take a picture of the empty parking lot with the amazing clouds, I spotted this guy.  Quite often, they take off Northeast of the fairgrounds and land in the empty lots.  That's going to be a challenge for them with the rally going on here.  They are expecting about 1200 rigs.  The big white tent will be full of vendors by Wednesday.

Look at all the flags on this baby!!  Looks like some from every country.  He's a tad smaller than the ones I'm used to in Albuquerque and you could barely hear his burners.  He landed maybe 200 yards from my rig.

This picture is from Friday ... the word was BLUE.  Like a black on black image, this is blue on blue.  I can already see I'm going to get behind on my list!!

Back to Walmart, we were all lined up and ready to go.  Most of my readers are RV people, so you know how it is to gather up RV's.  It's like herding CATS!!  With everyone finally on the same radio channel so we can stay together with no wrong turns, we left about 55 minutes early.  That got us in to the fairgrounds staging area earlier than expected.  

While staying at the fairgrounds BEFORE the rally starts, we are required to pay $25 per rig, per day.  On the third day (we are 3 days early) only 7 of us have to pay.  The rest get to stay free because of the volunteering we do with the ice cream.  Make sense?  If so, could you please explain that to the nice lady at the gate who just didn't get it?  Not even a little bit.  Good grief.  Fifteen minutes later, after explaining it every which way we possibly could, she figured our tab and let us go.

Then it became a waiting game.  There were 52 rigs from the "Beavers" (another group) waiting to be parked.  We were right after them.  I got so many different takes from the parking crew, I figured we would end up in the dirt between the huge generators that provide electricity and the even bigger garbage cans.

Talk about stressed!!!  That headache came on pretty quickly, which caused overheating of my cooling system!!  In the end (2-1/2 hours later) all was well as they parked us right at the front end of the parking lot, ON ASPHALT, but next to the HUGE generator.  There will be no sleeping in this rig, but that's okay.  I'm thrilled we all ended up on pavement.  This is exactly how I felt when I finally crashed last night.  I'm pretty sure I got two hours sleep.  The rest of the night I ran from all the bears chasing me.  I was up at 3:30.  UGH!!!

This morning I'm fixing a continental breakfast for all 38 of us, including mimosas.  This group deserves it for all their patience with me freaking out and all the hard work to come.  Sounds good, right?  Unfortunately for me, Jim Fulkerson, the wonderful guy who maintains my rig and changes the oil for me, called last night to say he is coming this morning at 8:30, just as I'm fixing breakfast.  This should be fun!!