Escapade ends

Judy, Glunda, John, Pat & Harry.  We are waiting for the evenings gift give-aways and entertainment.

The crowd, there were 547 RVs here and over 1,000 people for the 54th Escapade.

Ham-O-Rama, this is fellow RVers who have a talent of some sort and entertain the rest of us.  Some are great and some need tomatoes thrown at them.. many are quite surprisingly good!

After the closing ceremonies this afternoon several of us HitchHiker's went out for one more meal and fellowship.

And this is the exit road, we watched 2 or 3 RV's depart today with no problems, it's suppose to rain tonight so it could be worse for  the remaining 80 or 90 RVs.

Rain rain rain now cold cold cold

Well, what do you think the chances are that we will be able to get out of here?  Poor at best huh?  The one motorhome that tried today needed a tow truck just like the one yesterday.  We are being told to stay put. The fairgrounds will give us a free night Saturday to allow the ground to dry (assuming the rain stops!). There has been some gravel put on the road inside the track (all we have to do is GET to it!).  We had planned to leave tomorrow afternoon to get to Randy's pasture and attend Devyn's soccer game Saturday morning. Our plan now is to drive the truck only to Onsted early Saturday morning to watch the game then return here and tow out Sunday, weather permitting.

As you can see it is also cold and wet now, at 4:15 it is 42 degrees and tonight's forecast is 33 degrees.  I think this is the last spring rally in the north we will attend.  Make that this is the last spring rally in the north we will attend.
We will trek over to the evenings entertainment (Ham-O-Rama) and tomorrows afternoon's closing ceremony and one more seminar in the morning.

Escapade activities

                                                             Judy and Glynda relaxing.

                                    The stage and some opening activities as the attendees arrive.

The evenings entertainment, Johnny Counterfeit.  He does voice impersonations....singers, entertainers, politicians, etc.  We all had a good laugh.

This presenter discussed RVers and investing.  He's a lawyer and financial planner that is the Escapees counsel.  He's wearing the only suit I've expect to see here.

This is Nick Russell presenting his The Frugal RVer.  We have seen him at several rallies, including his own.

 After today's rallies activities Judy and I went out for supper.  We stopped at Jo Jo's Pretzels first.

                                After Jo Jo's we went to Penguin Point for burgers, we will not return.

Escapade

We made the 30 mile trip to the Goshen and the Elkhart County Fairgrounds with John & Glynda following us.  We are parked in the infield of the horse track so we can watch the horses and sulkies practicing.  Today was the first day that rally attendees can get in, 2 days early.  John & Glynda are parked next to us, John and Sharon are a stones throw away, we saw Ron & Lois as they were parking RVs, and another HitchHiker parked next to John & Glynda so we got to meet some new folks.  We also saw John & ??? who live in Foley, AL and are here in their HitchHiker.

                                                                A mini gathering.

Bremen, IN

We made it to Bremen, IN even after zig zaging through Lafayette, second time through there and second time getting sorta lost so there will not be a third time.  It's hot, 88 when we set up.  As you can see we are in the grass and rain is predicted the next two days so it might be interesting when we leave Saturday morning.  John and Glyenda Gregg are already here so we had the chance to see their brand new full body paint, very nice.  They had it done at Mike's where ours was done two years ago.  We had a long happy hour with them this evening.

Clinton, Indiana

We are closing in on Goshin, IN and the Escapade rally.  Today was a 173 mike trip to Terre Haute then north 20 or so miles to Clinton and Horseshoe Lake Campground for the night.  After a spaghetti supper we sat outside with Patches, she decided to go into a culvert by the yellow post in the bottom picture and explore,  She was in there about a half hour and came back out the same side.  .

Litchfield, IL Honey Bend CG

Monday we made an easy 3 hour drive to Litchfield, IL crossing the Mississippi River again.  After getting set up we discovered that a tree was blocking the rooftop TV dish that we thought would be OK.  We hooked back up and disconnected the utilities and moved forward two more times without success so no DirecTV! We get a couple local channels on the antenna and I have lots of movies saved on the DVR.
About 4pm we drove to Edwardsville to visit Kay and Charlie, HitchHiker RV friends from Gulf Shores. Last November Kay had a serious stroke in Gulf Shores and has been recovering at their home.  After an hour or two we headed home and stopped at Denny's for a late supper.