Escapade 2010-Goshen Indiana

We have arrived at the Fairgrounds in Goshen Indiana for the Escapee Rally.  We are so excited and arrived a couple of days early.  The rally starts on Sunday and it will  last for five days.  We plan on attending their Boot Camp classes and also will take  a CPR certification class.  What fun it was to realize that we did not have to pack.  Nor, did we have to worry that something would be forgotten.  Have RV...can travel.

The fairgrounds are very nice and everything is very clean and tidy.  We brought our bikes to make it easier to get to all the classes, vendors, and entertainment. Our friend, Carol, met us here and we came into the fairgrounds together  It was so good to see her.  She has been full timing for some time now and really is enjoying the life style.  She attended the Gypsy Journal Rally a couple of weeks ago and stayed in the area to have some RV work done. 

We have an excellent  site and the parking crew did a great job getting everyone in today.  Our site has electricity and water and is more spacious than we had imagined.  We will be able to put out our awning and we have a "front yard"  looking over the east side.  We were very lucky to get such a nice site. 

Entering the fairgrounds

Our camping site

Earlier in the week John and our friend Al worked on the diesel engine.  It had ran a little rough last week and they thought it might be good to change the fuel filter. At the same time they noticed that the air filter really needed to be changed.  It was huge and appeared to be very dirty!  We noticed such a difference driving up today and our fuel consumption was much less than our trip last week.  Thanks again Al for helping us. 

RV Driving School

We left our campground and headed north to Goshen Indiana for a couple of days.  Arrangements had been made to have John take a four hour RV driving class.  Several of our friends had taken this one -on -one driving instruction and had recommended this school to us.   Our instructor with the RV Driving School Lenny Orr, was attending the Gypsy Journal Rally and agreed to meet with us.  On Thursday morning he meet us at an abandoned K- Mart parking lot.  The class room was our coach and for four hours Lenny put John through the paces.

Lenny placed orange cones all over the parking lot and had John do all kinds of turns.-driving forward and backwards  He showed us how to check our braking system and worked with John on how to better utilize his mirrors. The most challenging maneuvers included backing the coach up in a zig-zag pattern. I was amazed how well John did and I think the instructor was too. 

We also traveled through Goshen making lots of right had turns and go onto the freeway for some additional instruction about merging, going down step grades etc.

I appreciated learning how to  make better signals for John to follow.  This will be very helpful when I'm helping guide him into a campground site.  It certainly was worth our time and was a good value.  Lenny is very knowledgeable and a great instructor. 

We especially appreciated the information about how to utilize the exhaust brakes and how to make sharp turns.  Our instructor has been a full timer for many years and had some great advice about this lifestyle and told us a lot about Escapees and birds of a feather chapters. 

Here is a picture of Lenny and John after the class.  He will also be at the Escapade Rally next week.  We are really looking forward to attending.