Sunday March 19th 2017

Today was the first official day of the 57th Escapade at the Pima County Fair grounds in Tucson. This is a major rally of the Escapees RV Club. Most people attending the event stay on site. I am commuting from my site 70 miles away.

Opening ceremony of the 57th Escapade on the big screen. 

The Escapees RV club is a social, education and advocacy organization for RVers. It has been around since the late 70s. I have been a member for about 3 years, but this is the first Escapade I’ve been able to attend.

About 11:30 this morning I converted my emailed registration confirmation for a name badge and a bag of brochures. I toured the vendor booths to identify anything I might want to buy this week and generally killed time until the first time attendee seminar at two and the opening ceremony at three. I had done enough research and reading about peoples past experiences so there wasn’t anything informational at the new attendee seminar that I wasn’t aware of. What was remarkable was the number of first time attendees in the room. It will be interesting to see if they have any statistics.

The opening ceremonies started kind of formal with the Pledge of Allegiance, and National Anthems of the US and Canada. The Escapade directors handled the first group of door prizes and the organizations leadership spoke, but the highlight was the words and story told by the 90 year old co-founder of the club Kay Peterson. It is inspirational, but drives home the point that the club is the family business.

Strings of Balloons over the RV sales area behind the Escapade staff parking area. 

At the conclusion of the opening ceremony everyone got an ice cream on a stick. They called it an ice cream social. I found the beer and wine being given out by the RV dealership showing new and used rigs at the Escapade a much better social. They also had snacks to go with the drinks. It was only about 4:30 so I could have made supper out of the cocktail hour. That’s where the real issue with being a commuter or “weekly walk in” as they call commuters. The next real event was at 7pm. Finding something to do until that then was going to be a challenge. Those staying on the grounds could go to some of the other social gatherings or back to their RVs until the evening entertainment.

Today, I chose to end my day a little after 4:30. Tomorrow I will probably hang around until the entertainment starts. I’m just going to have to play it by ear.