Gypsy Journal Rally – come & gone

This past week was spent at the Yuma Fairgrounds with 222 other rigs enjoying this unique rally.  Nick & Terri Russell put on 2 RV rallies a year one east, one west; as well as write the Gypsy Journal newspaper and maintain several very entertaining blogs!

                              Nick Russell opening the rally 

The number of seminars and the content of them was really interesting.  There seemed to be something for every interest, hobby and RV concern.  I attended the geocaching seminar and field exercise, genealogy, digital photography, computer safety, boondocking forum, women’s discussion group, and more.  Sessions ran from 9am to 5pm daily, with entertainment every night.

After an initial parking snafu on Sun, in the rain and mud, Nick found us a spot to park with electric closer to the activities.  I was grateful I didn’t have to walk too far to get to anything.  The marine base next door was very busy and a bit noisy with all the jets etc flying over – quite interesting to watch though and it seemed we could almost touch them!

              The jets are so fast they are hard to catch on camera

 

We had a small potluck  together with old and new friends one evening, pizza with all the rally attendees another night, and I know there was small group gatherings other times – but we were a bit tired and spent the evenings after the entertainment in our rig.

              Terri with some of the mounds of empty pizza boxes! 

 

The vendors at the show were tops, mostly RV related items, which was refreshing after Quartzsite where the majority of vendors seemed to carry “fluff'” items.

Bill bought the “marriage saver” – that’s a satellite dish stand that makes set up incredibly easy – it took Del Saindon a couple of hours initially and he had to re-bend our dish back into shape (it had taken a bad fall during the heavy winds we had in Quartzsite), but when we moved on Fri Bill was able to set up in 5 minutes!

                     Bill’s checking the set-up after Del finished

Check out this honey bee swarm - it was in the tree behind our rig!  Unfortunately the fairground workers managed to kill them all before they had time to fly to a new hive location; I was a bit upset, bees are so important to our agriculture.

We got to spend some time with our friends Dave & Lois, they had been on the trip to Mexico with us and are Colorado people too so we will see them this summer.  

        

              Dave & Bill                          Lois & Lesle

I think they are going to join us next week at the Army base ‘Yuma Proving Grounds’ where we are camped for the month. 

The Yuma Proving Ground is larger than the state of Rhode Island.  There are realistic middle eastern villages built on the base where the military can practice security procedures, IED location and deactivation, test new equipment, vehicles and electronic equipment and I don’t know what else! 

      

                    Travel camp for RV’s on base

    

           Cactus Cafe – a nice restaurant on base

The base is just east of the Colorado river and the extensive Imperial dam dry camping area – which we toured on Sat.

       

  Lake and camping area at the Imperial Dam / interesting marker

Safe travels!